Steve Jones wrote: > > > On 13/12/06, Gordon Sim wrote: > > > > > > Steve Jones wrote: > > > > > > > > > So what is the implementation of REST called? > > > > Sorry, I don't understand the question. As I understand it REST is an > > architectural style i.e. a named set of architectural constraints. A > > system may or may not conform to those constraints. > > But there must be a way of turning REST into implementation, like the > way when people talk about WS-* and technology I call it Service > Oriented Development (SOD IT). What ever the ROD approach is it > should have things such as naming conventions.
I don't quite understand your terminology. A system may conform to the REST style (if it conforms to the constraints that make up that style); you can create a RESTful system by ensuring that you conform to its constraints. That system may (or may not) also conform to some explicit naming convention for URIs. > > > I'm really struggling > > > to understand why REST people dislike having decent names for URIs. > > > > The REST people on this list seem to me to have shown no 'dislike' for > > 'decent names', they have just pointed out that isn't a characteristic > > of a RESTful system. > > And here is the challenge I have, for me a decent RESTful system > should have decent URI names. Fine. If you come across a system that does not use 'decent' URI names you can say the system is not in your view 'decent'. But you can't use that alone to say it is not RESTful. In the same way I could say a piece of Java code is not 'decent' if it doesn't conform to my notions of style; I could go further and say it violates the Sun coding style for Java. But I can't use that to say it violates the Java Language Specification. (This is a very loose analogy of course, so don't follow it too closely!) > Given the importance placed on URIs in > the REST paper and the importance of names in general to people I > think its an over-sight. I'd say in a SOA the names of services are > 100% an architectural element as they represent a key link between the > business and the system, and I'd argue in REST that resource names are > again a key link, and given that the URI is the manifestation of that > resource (i.e. it is the "real" name of the resource) then the two > should match. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't recall WSDL including an explicit naming convention that must be followed e.g. for service names. That is perfectly sensible in my opinion. WSDL specifies an interoperable format for describing a service. A naming convention would be a separate issue as it wouldn't affect interoperability at the level WSDL addresses (it might however help make service names easier to remember or more intuitive or whatever). Hopefully this at least clarifies my opinion and we can then perhaps agree to disagree. I am not arguing that meaningful URIs are not valuable; I just think that any formal naming convention is a *separate issue* from the description of an architectural style.
