On Nov 27, 2006, at 10:32 AM, Paul Fremantle wrote:
I never claimed that you don't have to any design work when you use REST. You don't have to design a new interface with custom operations. You have to decide on your URIs, data formats, schemas ... having one part fixed doesn't mean you don't have to care about the REST.On 11/26/06, Stefan Tilkov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I claim it's wrong to invent a new> and different application interface in each and every application :-)Stefan I think it is a mischaracterization to say that you don't need to invent an application interface with REST. Thats like saying that there is no need for database designers because SQL defines a clear CRUD interface.
The level of uniformity in REST is useful, and I like it, but without defining the representation of the state (i.e. if its XML the schema) in a clear way, the REST uniformity is a tiny fraction of the definition.
You can use XML Schema with REST ...
... given an XML Schema you can use all the data binding tools you want. A GET on a customer URI that returns a representation that conforms to that schema is just as easy to process (at least!) as a GetCustomerData operation. It's much easier to test (think "curl" and "wget", using file: URIs ...). Similar arguments apply to the other methods.The fact is that given a reasonably written and documented WSDL, any programmer with a WSDL tool can probably use that service. Given the REST model and a URL there's not much I can do except call GET and guess what the results are going to be :-)
If you give me a WSDL, I still to have to either guess at the semantics, or understand them from some textual description. The same is true for a RESTful interface. I claim that REST's default interface + descriptions of the content types + the resource design nets less than the comparable WSDL.
MQ and JMS also define concepts such as queues and topics, so I agree - they are conceptually similar. But similar to REST, not similar to CORBA or RMI :-)As far as I'm concerned, the *whole* point of SOA over and above previous integration systems, is that there is clear metadata about the message formats as well as interaction patterns. After all, MQSeries and JMS also define clearly uniform methods (PUT, GET, PUBLISH, SUBSCRIBE) as well.
No, at least from my perspective we're having a very balanced and unemotional discussion here :-)I hope I'm not coming across as anti-REST, I think REST is an excellent model. I just think that REST is coming up its hype curve and WS-* is down at the bottom and that neither position is right.
Stefan -- Stefan Tilkov, http://www.innoq.com/blog/st/
Paul -- Paul Fremantle VP/Technology, WSO2 and OASIS WS-RX TC Co-chair http://bloglines.com/blog/paulfremantle [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Oxygenating the Web Service Platform", www.wso2.com
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