On 8/1/07, William Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If the form/schema/whatever of what I need to send to a REST resource changes > then guess what? I need to change what I send it. I can't assume to be > blissfully unaware and go on with life. If implementations change, there is a > good chance that that might effect me. Now if the back-end database changes > or the implementation language changes that might make no difference > whatsoever (btw something that lots of non-REST technologies provide) but > there are some changes that would effect my resource interface and just > because I'm using POST doesn't mean that I won't be inconvenienced.
In that example of changing data, yes, it could very well be the case that a change breaks your code. It doesn't necessarily have to be the case (if the media type has a decent extensibility story), but it could. This situation isn't specific to REST though, and in fact it's *exactly* the same for SOA. But because it's exactly the same situation with both architectural styles, we can ignore it when comparing the two styles. What we're left comparing now is, in effect, the degree of coupling that exists in the *exchange* of the data, and it is in this respect that the benefit of the loose coupling provided by the uniform interface can be seen. Mark. -- Mark Baker. Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. http://www.markbaker.ca Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies http://www.coactus.com
