On 08/12/06, Stuart Charlton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > The best answer probably is: > > > You use a collection of HTML pages. > > > > Which isn't as much use as a nice and formal WSDL > > which can be quickly > > consumed by standard tools. REST really needs to > > address this issue > > as versioning documents (which is what HTML is) is a > > step back over a > > formal and technical interface spec IMO. > > How is an HTML FORM not a formal, technical interface > spec? It exposes a simple data structure (a > multi-value string dictionary), but otherwise, I > thought simplicity was a good thing when appropriate.
Its as formal as a word document, its not something that can be automatically consumed. > > WSDL provides very little formality. WSDL just > provides code generation tools guidance on what global > elements to use for operations, bodies, and faults. > In a loosely coupled system, this frankly should be > runtime metadata. This whole edifce, to me, strikes > me as ridiculously brittle. Its better than nothing (which is where REST is) it also can't be runtime only as it has to be versioned and managed. > > A schema like RelaxNG or XSD provides quite a bit more > formal value, though it's mostly syntactic. > > WSDL says little of pre/post conditions, invariants, > versioning (!), and requires lots of care in designing > an extensible interface. All of these require > localized, specialized solutions, and copious human > readable policy. Tell me about it, the lack of WS-Contract is a big irritation to me. > > REST still needs the above too, except with REST it's > all just hypermedia, so arguably more findable, > immediate, up-to-date, and easy to understand. HTML > FORMs are naturally extensible, can link to newer > versions, and can even leverage mobile code execution > for optionally enforcing pre-conditions on the client > side. This model strikes me as many leaps ahead of > WSDL (except in terms of describing more complex data > structures). Only arguable if there is a standard solution for REST, having an HTML version of word documents is not (IMO) progression. If its always ad-hoc then its a massive step backwards. > > > I'll check out WADL, for me this lack of a standard > > mechanism is a big > > mark down for REST as an enterprise solution so I'm > > assuming something > > will be sorted in the next 12 months. > > I think XForms likely is a direction REST will go to > formally describe more complex data structures in > hypermedia. Or the Atom publishing protocol for > handling categorized, timeseries data. So right now I think everyone is agreed that this is a big gap in REST. > > Cheers > Stu > > __________________________________________________________ > Yahoo! Music Unlimited > Access over 1 million songs. > http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited >
