Re: Looking for examples of non-REST information resources

On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 17:31 -0500, Jonathan Rees wrote:
> The subject is sort of a teaser, let me be more precise.
> 
> I'm looking for examples URIs with the following properties
>   - GET requests result in 200 responses
>   - The URI, when used to refer (e.g. as a noun phrase in a sentence
> or as a subject or object in an RDF statement), seems to refer to
> something that does not naturally fit the REST mould.
> 
> By 'the REST mould' I mean what Roy F means by REST resource; my
> summary would be
>   - has a current state consisting of "abstract information"
>   - the state may or may not change through time
>   - the state can be "represented" by "representations" (bit strings +
> metadata) synthesized by a server
>   - the state might be updated by PUT and POST, or by some other process
> 
> My examples are
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
> http://www.random.org/integers/?num=10&min=1&max=6&col=1&base=10&format=plain&rnd=new


In what way do you see these as not naturally fitting the REST mold?
They seem to me to fit it.

BTW, the other input that you didn't mention in your REST summary above
is the client's request, since that can also affect the representation
that is returned.

> 
> Can you name more? Are there lots of these resources?  Or only a few?
> Do we need to be able to use their URIs to refer to them, or should we
> refer to them in some other way, or not at all? Are 200 responses
> still "representations" of these resources, or do they bear a
> different relationship to the resources? Are they "information
> resources"?

To my mind if a 200 response is returned then the thing *is* an
"information resource" -- there is no better qualifying criterion.  In
my view, the reason that the role of "information resource" exists in
the web architecture is to enable us to talk about the things that have
"representations" that may be returned in 200 responses.

David

> 
> If it's necessary in order to formulate answers, pretend you're the
> URI owner, and are entitled to make decisions about what these
> resources are.
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> 
> 

-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
Cleveland Clinic (contractor)
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of Cleveland Clinic.

Received on Sunday, 5 December 2010 19:24:42 UTC