RE: REST, uniformity and semantics

Re speech acts and business processes:
here's a fairly well worked-out exposition
in terms of UNCEFACT standards:
<http://www.dsv.su.se/~prasad/Publications/WorkInProgress20021129BP2.pdf
>

The verbs are a little different, e.g. Propose and Accept,
because every shared state change in a business deal
requires agreement or at least assent.

One thing that UNCEFACT did is to abstract Commitment
and Contract as a resources or business objects so that
Commitments are proposed and accepted or rejected.

Commitment is a generalization of an Order Line Item.
Contract (e.g. Order) is a collection of Commitments.

It actually fits pretty well into REST.
The speech act verbs refine POST (or so I think).
The fact that there are only a few of them
has the same advantages that few verbs have in REST:
including facilitating interoperation.

Don't know if this fits into WSA.
Maybe WS-Choreography?

-Bob Haugen

Received on Thursday, 15 May 2003 07:40:11 UTC