2008/12/3 Nick Gall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 3:50 AM, Steve Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Firstly I didn't write that slide (a chap at work called Ben Scowen >> did) because I wanted to make sure I got a REST fan writing stuff >> rather than a REST cynic, I'll pass on your comments. > > Somehow I had a feeling that someone other than you wrote that bullet. > >> Secondly the WWW is the biggest RESTful system out there... BUT as I >> said in the voice over the majority of the Web _isn't_ implemented as >> a REST. In theory WWW is _all_ RESTful but in practice it isn't (e.g. >> >> http://www.heartratemonitor.co.uk/hrmselector/comparisontable_search_form4.php >> should be a straight parametrised GET but is a POST and the "Search >> Again" doesn't include the previously selected elements). > > I wholeheartedly agree that most websites that comprise the WWW aren't > implemented in a fully RESTful way. We can leave the debate regarding what > percentage for another day. My point is that even if the "vast vast > majority" of websites aren't fully RESTful, that still means that > some (perhaps tiny) percentage of websites are fully RESTful, and a somewhat > greater percentage (but perhaps still a small minority) are at least > partially RESTful. I think we agree on this (see below). >> My point in the discussion with Mark is that most people (the vast >> vast majority) do not implement Websites in a RESTful way, even though >> WWW is inherently RESTful by its Fielding definition. > Again, no need to quibble about percentages, for the sake of the point I'll > make below, let's agree that the "vast vast majority" of people do NOT > implement websites in a fully RESTful way. But let's also agree that at > least some tiny percentage DO implement websites in a substantially or > wholly RESTful way. >> Not really a contradiction its a question of theory v practice, in >> theory Mark is right, in practice I am ;) > > Ahhh... but there still is a bit of contradiction left. Though we all now > roughly agree that the websites that compose the WWW mostly fall short of > full REST compliance, and that most of those that fall short fall WAY short, > this still means that a small, but significant set of websites do exemplify > the REST style. But that's not what you said in the post I quoted: >> > 'Your references are about purely websites, this has NOTHING to do with >> > proving your statement on REST adoption being in the "millions".' > > My problem with this statement is your use of all caps "NOTHING" in your > assertion. If you had said, "almost nothing", or "virtually nothing", or > "very little", etc. there wouldn't be a contradiction. Maybe its just me, > but when I read "NOTHING" in all caps, I take that to mean absolutely, > positively, CATEGORICALLY nothing with no exceptions or degrees whatsoever.
The context here was the Mark said this this was "all" the evidence he needed in terms of REST adoption. That reference has NOTHING to do with proving the statement in the millions its like a Chinese Economist piece..... more on that concept in a bit. > But given our agreement that at least some websites of the WWW are > substantially or wholly RESTful, this means that Mark's reference to "purely > websites" has at least something to do with "REST adoption being in the > 'millions'". That was my point in my email raising the issue. > Now this is not to say that the fact that SOME websites are RESTful makes > Mark's case that REST has been adopted by "millions". We'd have to go out > and count the number of websites we considered RESTful enough to count. But, > it does mean that your claim that such websites have "NOTHING" to do with > REST adoption cannot be reconciled with your apparent admission that at > least some websites are implemented RESTfully. > I say apparent because you never come out and directly state this. I'm sure lots do, not sure how many are 100% compliant with everything though (e.g. the Yahoo and Google APIs have been said by some to be not 100% RESTful). Hell we've got some pretty massive REST stuff on the Webside at work (and I mean MASSIVE). > You > simply said things such as "most people (the vast vast majority) do not > implement Websites in a RESTful way". This implies that you agree that at > least a minority DO implement Websites in a RESTful way." > So Mark's counting of such websites towards his goal of "millions" of > RESTful developers did indeed have SOMETHING to do with the issue of how > many RESTful developers there are in the world. But from a statistics point of view this is just Chinese Economics. This is the argument that says "there are billions of people in China and some must do X therefore given its from a billion its must be millions". Statistically the concept that "millions of developers" do REST (specifically the Hypermedia...engine....state bit) can NOT be inferred from the statement that SOME people who have created SOME of the pages have done it that way. Its statistically a completely and utterly pointless thing to claim as you cannot in any way shape or form get between the pages and the developers and certainly not to the numbers of developers. > Accordingly, to > categorically exclude (via the use of "NOTHING") such RESTful websites from > attempts to estimate the number of RESTful developers is wrong. It is absolutely and utterly wrong to do that from a statistical perspective, the two sets of data (Pages and developers) are disjoint and there is no defined overlap between them that enables you to reach any meaningful conclusions especially at the level of "millions" (which given that Java often claims "only" 3-5 million developers is a ruddy big number). It was just as wrong as the ridiculous use of "number of HTTP requests" to indicate REST usage. This would be like measuring the number of characters on the web and using that to indicate the number of people who speak in an obscure regional dialect that happens to use the standard ASCII character set is in the "millions". Its like saying that as there are Billions of Muslims in the world and that _some_ of them are terrorists that therefore there are millions of terrorists. If he'd done something like taking a reference set of developers and said that x% of them had done proper REST and then scaled that by the number of global developers it would at least have been a reasonable way of sampling the population. Its bad stats, its even bad set theory, its plain bad maths. > I hope you agree that if and when we ever do get around to estimating the > number of RESTful designers/developers we can justifiably include in that > count some number of website designers, not just application-to-application > interface designers. We can, with the proviso that they aren't of course fulling doing REST as they can't do PUT or DELETE from the browser. I've fairly regularly said that for the Website interaction side that I get the REST point, its always been on the A2A/B2B that I've had the issue and its there that I tend to find myself most of my working life. Steve Steve > -- Nick >> 2008/12/2 Nick Gall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> >> > On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 7:02 AM, Gervas Douglas >> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> <<So last week at AdobeMAX I did my first public presentation on doing >> >> REST and SOA together. Thanks to Duane for that and to the person who >> >> dropped out leaving me with the baby :) >> > >> > Steve, I'm going through the slides right now. So far they are >> > excellent. >> > This particular bullet on slide 22 caught my eye: >> > "The World Wide Web is therefore inherently RESTful and the largest >> > example >> > of a REST based system." >> > Amen to that brother! That reminded me of the debate Steve and Mark had >> > back >> > in early November. In one post >> > ( >> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/service-orientated-architecture/message/11892 >> > ), >> > Steve asserted: >> > 'Your references are about purely websites, this has NOTHING to do >> > with proving your statement on REST adoption being in the "millions".' >> > In my mind, saying the WWW is inherently RESTful and is the largest >> > example >> > of a REST-based system strongly implies that Mark's references to >> > websites, >> > which are what make up the WWW after all, has at least SOMETHING to do >> > with >> > REST adoption. >> > How could all these web site designers/developers have contributed to >> > the >> > emergence of the WWW -- the largest example of a REST-based system -- >> > without in some way "adopting" or implementing REST? It seems quite >> > strange >> > to say that all the world's web site designers/developers were ignoring >> > REST >> > yet from all these ignorant efforts the WWW emerged as "inherently >> > RESTful." >> > Steve, could you please reconcile these two statement? >> > -- Nick >> > >> >> > > > -- > Nick Gall > Phone: +1.781.608.5871 > AOL IM: Nicholas Gall > Yahoo IM: nick_gall_1117 > MSN IM: (same as email) > Google Talk: (same as email) > Email: nick.gall AT-SIGN gmail DOT com > Weblog: http://ironick.typepad.com/ironick/ >
