Patrick May wrote: > > > On 9 Jan 2008, at 10:51, Gordon Sim wrote: > > I don't think it makes sense to compare this feature either to REST > > as a > > style or to any implementation of it (e.g. HTTP). It seems to be > > outside > > the scope that REST addresses and therefore potentially orthognal. A > > more useful comparison might be between the use of RESTful HTTP versus > > the use of JERI. > > I'm not sure about this. I think that the difference shows an > inherent weakness of REST compared to Space Based Architecture. It is > possible to implement any REST system using SBA, simply by > implementing RESTful service interfaces. I don't believe it is > possible to implement every SBA system using a REST architecture. If > there is a REST implementation that does allow that, I'd be interested > in learning more about it.
My point was that I understand REST to be focused on remote interactions. Mobile code is outside of that scope in my view. The resource you retrieve RESTfully might well be represented by a 'mobile object' (e.g. a java applet). E.g. I could have a system that used RESTful HTTP to get a particular java object in serialised form that the application then unmarshals, casts to the appropriate interface and uses as a target for method invocation. If you are saying that Jini provides code that does this already and there isn't an equivalent, existing product that is RESTful thats very likely true. That seems to me to be a different thing from saying that a REST architecture prevents exploiting the benefits of mobile code though. --Gordon.
