Re: Service description value for hypermedia?

On Jun 18, 2005, at 12:29 AM, Jan Algermissen wrote:

>
>
> On Jun 17, 2005, at 11:59 PM, Stefan Tilkov wrote:
>
>
>> When we do code generation in our MDA projects, we examine a few  
>> use case implementations and look for similarities. If we find  
>> them, refactoring them into code generation templates is one of  
>> many options. The same might be true here: If convenient libraries  
>> for Amazon, Atom, Google and whatever-RESTful-app share a lot of  
>> code patterns that are not easily or efficiently put into a  
>> framework, they might be candidates for code generation. The  
>> description (or model) has to provide sufficient information to  
>> drive the generator.
>>
>
> If within your 'system space' (be it the Web as a whole or some  
> enterprise) you find such similarities, the REST- or Web-way to  
> handle them is to standardize (globally or within enterprise  
> context) message formats that capture them.

Maybe a way to say this more 'formal' is that you make application  
semantics visible by moving them into linking semantics. The  
libraries we are talking about are actually hard-coding the
linking semantics[1] defined in the message type specifications.

Jan

[1] maybe think of them as 'application state change option semantics"


> It is an evolutionary process that 'factors out' application  
> semantics into message formats once they are recognized as  
> 'similarities'.
>
> Isn't that why there is RSS instead of doing blog machine  
> processing with HTML?
>
> Now that I look at it this way, I think people should start to  
> collect 'enterprise
> behavioural patterns' and express them as (suggested) message types.
>
> What about UBL? Isn't UBL doing exactly this (for some part of  
> enterprise context)?
>
> Jan
>
>
>
>>
>> That said, I'm not at all sure that generating code for RESTful  
>> Web APIs is a good idea -- but then again, I'm not sure the  
>> description language itself is a good idea either.
>>
>> I find it hard, though, to imagine a useful Web description  
>> language that would not also be usable for code generation.
>>
>>
>>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________ 
> ______________________
> Jan Algermissen, Consultant &  
> Programmer                             http://jalgermissen.com
> Tugboat Consulting, 'Applying Web technology to enterprise  
> IT'       http://www.tugboat.de
>
>
>
>
>
>

________________________________________________________________________ 
____________________
Jan Algermissen, Consultant & Programmer                              
http://jalgermissen.com
Tugboat Consulting, 'Applying Web technology to enterprise IT'        
http://www.tugboat.de

Received on Friday, 17 June 2005 22:43:26 UTC