2008/11/7 Mark Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > [oops, I thought I sent this earlier. apologies] > > On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:41 PM, Steve Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I completely agree based on previous messages. But a couple of times >> (here and the "protocol" one) you've pushed the idea of HTTP adoption >> as being indicative of REST adoption. The two things are different. >> As was said before WS-* uses HTTP and it isn't REST. >> >> Your references are about purely websites, this has NOTHING to do with >> proving your statement on REST adoption being in the "millions". > > I never said REST adoption was in the millions though. What I did say > was that millions of developers are *unknowingly* working within many > (not all) of the constraints of REST when developing Web apps. > Hypermedia-as-the-engine-of-application-state is, in fact, one of > those.
That isn't actually what you said.... you said "Consider that there are millions of developers who have (unknowingly) mastered REST's "Hypermedia as the engine of application state" constraint;" If you are now qualifying your statement to be "millions of people have grasped at least one concept of REST" then I'd go with it... of course one constraint on its own doesn't REST make. > >>> None of what you describe there is necessary for inter-site >>> integration using the Web. All that's required is a link, and that's >>> what you've got. Take a bow already, and stop being so modest. 8-) >> >> This only works if you define integration as "linking two things" >> rather than having anything that is actually useful for computers to >> use for integration. Link traversal isn't integration in the same >> way as FK traversal isn't integration in a database. > > Your Web site and InfoQ's web site have been integrated in such a way > that a user can seamlessly traverse from the former to the latter, and > from there to other sites as yet undeveloped. I know it doesn't seem > like rocket science, but that's only because we take it for granted > after living with the Web now for well over a decade. If this chat > were happening back in 1991, that feature *would* sound like rocket > science. But back in 1991 it wasn't RESTful and was still possible. Its a brilliantly simple (IMO the best inventions are) mechanism for inter-document linking, that superbly took the complex SGML and concepts from Hypercard and its ilk and delivered in a massive distributed way a simple solution. Its document linking rather than systems integration however. > >> Just a quick question: Are you saying that HTTP and the href tag is >> sufficent for a site to claim it is doing REST style integration? >> This way it would be the case that sites that just use POST for >> everything would be fully REST compliant. > > No. Thank god for that, I was about to have to re-write a presentation on REST ;) Steve > > Mark. >
