Re: SOAP & REST

On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Mark Baker wrote:

> Hi Stuart,
>
> > > The difference is that in the former form, a user doesn't know whether
> >                                                ^^^^person, browser or
> > program?
>
> All of the above.  The URI is opaque.  In the absence of other
> information (i.e. before invoking GET), given only the URI, nobody knows
> what it does.

Yes but usually you are going to a specific URI because you know that you
may find the information you need. Either you go to a company web site,
you you ask a search engine. In both case you are doing discovery to
locate the resource that will provide the service you want (give you the
right information).
It is the same fot the multiplication example, if you just have the URI
you can't know that it will actually multiply two number, nor the format
on the other side (it may well be base16).

> was a multiplier.  Machines can work exactly the same way, though
> obviously they'd need a machine processable assertion of the fact that
> the service was a multiplier, returned on the GET.

Yes, and a user will find this assertion on search engines. So the
processing model is roughly the same.

-- 
Yves Lafon - W3C
"Baroula que barouleras, au tiéu toujou t'entourneras."

Received on Thursday, 7 February 2002 10:54:23 UTC