Re: more charter changes, and do you like "RESTful" ?

I agree. I also think it's a case where although it's somewhat of an abuse 
of the term there is little value in fighting what's become common usage. 
The experts know better and the others don't really need to know.
--
Arnaud  Le Hors - Software Standards Architect - IBM Software Group




From:   Erik Wilde <dret@berkeley.edu>
To:     public-ldp@w3.org, REST-Discuss <rest-discuss@yahoogroups.com>, 
Cc:     Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
Date:   04/03/2012 10:04 AM
Subject:        Re: more charter changes, and do you like "RESTful" ?



hello sandro.

(i am cross-posting this to rest-discuss@yahoogroups.com, but please 
direct responses to public-ldp@w3.org only! thanks!)

On 2012-04-03 9:25 , Sandro Hawke wrote:
> I'm getting some pushback on using the term "RESTful" at all.  I guess
> the recent TAG meeting brought up some of the differences between Roy
> Fielding's idea of REST and the various ways to term is used and misused
> today.   If anyone would care to suggest alternative terminology or
> voice support for terms currently in the charter, please do so soon.

we have had (long and eventually fruitless) discussions around this in 
the WS-REST workshops. the problem is as follows:

- technically speaking, REST is an architectural style, and we don't 
want to refer to just this style, because that would allow us to build 
something other than the web, and we don't want to do that.

- what we usually want to refer to by "REST is" "the web used 
correctly", which means using the basic standards URI and HTTP and the 
supporting fabric of registered URI schemes, media types, and link 
relations. but unfortunately, there is no term for that other than "the 
web used correctly".

so we (the WS-REST participants) ended up concluding that even though 
"RESTful" is a somehow incorrect name, it is the best we have. for what 
we really want to say, there is no better name than "the web used 
correctly", and that sounds very awkward. so we continue to say 
"RESTful", even though i do agree that it is not the best name to use.

thanks and cheers,

dret.

-- 
erik wilde | mailto:dret@berkeley.edu  -  tel:+1-510-2061079 |
            | UC Berkeley  -  School of Information (ISchool) |
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