Re: How do you POST to a "document"?

Roy T. Fielding wrote,
> > When I think of the web in terms of processes and communiction
> > channels I'm quite definitely not thinking in terms of abstract
> > entites with the characterisitics you claim for resources. Where
> > you see states and names I see flows and processing.
>
> Umm, REST is a model of flows and processing.  We are talking about
> identification, which is only one part of that model.  Of course, if
> you aren't talking about identification then there can't be any
> disagreement over the definition of resource.

There's no disagreement because we're talking different languages.

I don't doubt that you can reinterpret anything from the one model into 
the other ... but it doesn't follow that they're the same model in any 
interesting sense.

There's a nice example from Whitehead (the other half of Principia 
Mathematica) you can base topology on points and set of points, and you 
can base geometry on spheres and sets of spheres (the analog of points 
in the sphere-based model is a particular kind of infinite sequence of 
nested spheres). But the isomorphism between the models doesn't entail 
that the things in one model are also present in the other ... their 
domains are disjoint in virtue of being based on different primitives.

And which you'd choose would depend on which was most appropriate for 
the task at hand, not some arbitrary constraint.

Cheers,


Miles

Received on Thursday, 23 January 2003 20:04:37 UTC