Re: Use Cases

On Jun 7, 2006, at 10:59 AM, Jan Algermissen wrote:

> except for HTTP and any shared MIME types, everything in a RESTful  
> system is discovered at runetime.

Who said?  I disagree entirely.  Just because the SOAP-heads blew  
WSDL doesn't mean that there's anything intrinsically wrong with the  
notion of declaring a REST interface.  It would help with things like  
tooling and testing and automation, too.

> IMHO, HTTP and the shared understanding of a MIME type *and* the  
> intention of the client developer at design time are sufficient to  
> actually implement the client side - if the design time  
> expectations do not hold at runtime this will be detected at  
> runtime. (I do not consider this a problem since there cannot be a  
> design time constraint on the runtime in a distributed system  
> anyhow so you allways need to check and expect insifficient data)

My experience differs.  When building a heterogeneous distributed  
system, I'd like to have a contract that operates at a higher level  
than a MIME type, so that when things break, you can finger-point  
constructively.  -Tim