Re: IOTDB worldview vs EVRTHNG

Here’s my summary of the basics for using REST from my slides on the WoT Framework

  Representational State Transfer (REST) 
HTTP GET to retrieve a thing's description
HTTP GET to retrieve all properties of a thing
HTTP PUT to update all properties of a thing
HTTP PATCH to apply changes to some properties
HTTP POST to invoke actions on a thing
HTTP POST is also used to notify events
To proxies or dependent things
  REST can also be used with other protocols.

These methods and their meaning are described in the HTTP specs, see RFC 7231 and RFC 5789 for the PATCH method

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231>
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5789 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5789>

In respect to using PATCH here is an extract from RFC 5789:

> A PATCH request can be issued in such a way as to be idempotent,
> which also helps prevent bad outcomes from collisions between two
> PATCH requests on the same resource in a similar time frame.


The URI paths are really a matter for each server.  For the Web of Things, we would like to decouple scripting from the protocols, as this makes scripting easier, it allows the protocols to be changed as requirements evolve, and it makes it easier to implement highly scalable service platforms.  As a result, developers only need to see the URI for a thing’s description and won’t need to deal with the URIs for the REST services described above.

—
   Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org <mailto:dsr@w3.org>>