On 12.12.2006, at 21:17, Gregg Wonderly wrote:
Maybe you can clarify where smaller is scoped from?
With RPC/WS-* you need to design the interface and the payloads with
REST you only need to design the payloads.
Now, if you add Atom to the set of axioms[1] you narrow the space
even further as you get a pervasive means to deal with items and
collections and how to create and edit items in general (+ a heap of
other things I won't go into here). Effectively with HTTP+URI+Atom
you only (luckily so) get to design two remaining things:
- Atom extensions to enable the processes you have (e.g. purchasing,
bidding, billing,auditiing,
trading...[2]); that is extensions to the Atom entries that
enables them to participate in the processes
- state-representing media types for the entities being managed (e.g.
invoices).
Essentially this means you are freed from putting the state
transition semantics discussed here over the last two days into the
media types (which is arguably a more difficult thing to do).
You also get fro free Atom's very clean extension model and you gain
radical (IMHO) overall simplification because you end up doing
everything the same way everywhere.
Jan
[1] The use of 'Axiom' in this context has been coined by Mark:
http://www.markbaker.ca/blog/2006/07/19/standards-as-axioms/
[2] I bet it also works fine for supply chain management and ERP etc..
