Re: Few questions about REST

On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 12:25:22PM -0400, Sergey Beryozkin wrote:
> Mark,
> 
> > If you're referring to;
> >
> > "To me "doc-style SOAP" is "RESTful SOAP"."
> >   -- http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2003Sep/0020.html
> 
> Apologies, I thought it was "doc-lit SOAP".

Ah, gotcha.  No problem.

> > What I meant is that if you want to be doing document style SOAP,
> > you should really be using REST.  I didn't mean to suggest that
> > all so-called document-style uses of SOAP are RESTful.
> OK, I think we agree that some of document-style uses of SOAP are RESTful.
> 
> Can you give a simple example of an unRESTful use of doc-lit SOAP ? This
> would help me to see what you mean when saying that not all uses of doc-lit
> SOAP are RESTful.

http://www.pocketsoap.com/weblog/SoapInterop/r3/doclit.html

There, "echoPerson" and "echoDocument" are the operations, which are not
uniform.

> > > Doc-Lit SOAP can also meet other REST constraints.
> >
> > Yes, I think it *could* meet all of them.
> >
> > But so could rpc/encoded.
> 
> How could it ? Rpc/Encoded use of SOAP can't meet (by design) any of REST
> constraints, can it ? The only constraint it can try to meet is that of
> state as representation, and it's only with Rpc/Literal.

If the encoded operation is uniform, then it would meet the uniform
interface constraint.  Other constraints could be added.  With RPC/
literal, you're basically starting with a low level protocol on top of
which you'd have to reinvent HTTP.  Oh, and it would be rpc/encoded
over TCP.

> > I don't believe it's particularly useful to say what *could* be, at
> > least without detailing what's involved in making it so.  I would say
> > that it's more useful to relate what people do today with doc/lit, to
> > REST.
> Can you please clarify a little bit more what you mean ? Most (or at least
> not all) uses of doc-lit SOAP are RESTful.

Can you point me to one that you think is RESTful?

> Do you mean specifying some
> guidelines (that is constraining doc-lit sufficiently enough) under which
> *all* (instead of 'some') uses of doc-lit SOAP can be said to be RESTful?

Right, though I'd want to use a new name rather than "doc/lit".
"RESTful doc/lit", say.  Or "state/literal" maybe.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Wednesday, 17 September 2003 22:38:00 UTC