Re: Few questions about REST

Hi Mark,

Thanks a lot,

> > Can we consider doc-lit SOAP as being "mostly RESTful" ?
>
> In general, I don't think so.  Resource identification and the uniform
> interface are absolutely core to REST.  If the interface were "very
> general", without being strictly "uniform" (e.g. "PROPFIND", or
> "SEARCH"), but resources were identified, then I would answer "yes".

For example, the same way as PROPFIND would be used to retrieve a property
of some identified resource and possibly create it if it's not available,
setting it to some initial value passed in a request's body ? In other
words, using PROPFIND would not be trictly "iniform" in that it'd be used
for not only retrieving a property, the same way as doc-lit SOAP sometimes
uses POST for retrieving the representation.

> But if we're talking about very specific methods like "getInvoice",
> then I'd have to answer "No".
Do you refer to the fact that a doc-lit SOAP, while not passing method
names, can still be used to "getInvoice" with a message body being empty and
SOAPAction hinting to a handler that a  getInvoice() should be invoked ?

I thought you agreed in an earlier message that if a control parameter
(SOAPAction or application/xml+soap action attribute) is a URI then it's
semantically equivalent to a case when such a control parameter is passed
within a resource URI. A resource then could still be identifiable. For
example, 1 is a (relative) URI to a subordinate resource :

POST mainResource/1

and

POST mainResource
application/xml+soap; action=1

seem to be equivalent, especially due to the fact that
"application/xml+soap" is a registered mime type and it might be easier for
generic intermediaries to understand that it's  mainResource/1 which is
identified.
Do you agree ?

So when you said that "doc-lit SOAP is RESTful" what did you mean by that ?

I'll try to understand better what you said with respect to late-binding,
and then I'll ask more questions :-)
Cheers
Sergey Beryozkin

Received on Wednesday, 17 September 2003 05:22:55 UTC