Re: Role of operations?

On Jun 16, 2005, at 7:33 AM, Mark Baker wrote:

>> Another case is the ability to describe the xml documents returned  
>> and
>> which parts are hypermedia allows very interesting RESTful  
>> choreography.
>> For example, Atom specifies that a POST Entry to the "POSTEntry" URI
>> results in a document that has a URI for the "EDITEntry" interface
>> (which I think is GET,PUT, DELETE).  This association between two  
>> URIs
>> can only be done if somehow the URI in the POSTEntry response is  
>> tied to
>> the EDITEntry interface.  An ideal thing for a Web Description  
>> Language.
>>
>
> Strongly agreed.  That's a forms language use case, since that  
> possible
> state transition is discovered at runtime.  That's what REST's
> "hypermedia as the engine of application state" constraint is all  
> about.
>

Now I'm starting to understand your point. Would you say that  
describing the possible state transitions (the 'classes') statically  
(in the description language), while still discovering and following  
the actual transitions ('instances' ) at runtime, violates REST  
principles?

Stefan

> Mark.
>