Re: A viewpoint on harvesting REST

Hey Dave,

On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 11:15:26AM -0700, David Orchard wrote:
> 
> Mark,
> 
> I did some digging into the use of WSDL with GET as part of TAG discussions.
> It appears to me that WSDL can fully describe a URI.

Oh, for sure, I know it can.  I've likened the long-term-viable use of
WSDL to HTML forms in this way (both for GET and POST).

>  The UrlReplacement
> section shows how parameters can be specified.  I do think the WSDL group
> has a bit more to do in this area - such as more than zero examples of this,
> highlighting it more strongly in the spec, integrating with the SOAP 1.2
> work - but they have on their issues list update to deal with soap 1.2.  I

Right.

> do think the limitations of URI encoding versus XML encoding should be
> described in this context, but that seems like a web architecture issue and
> not a ws arch issue.  Especially with experts like Roy Fielding and Tim Bray
> on the TAG.

We'll see.  I personally think that's a non-problem.  URIs are opaque to
everybody but the publisher, so whether it's
http://example.org/{xsd:decimal}10 or
http://example.org/my-private-type-system/decimal/10, it doesn't matter
at all to a user of that URI.

> I think that we are at an impasse on how to integrate REST with Web services
> from the perspective of methods names.  I believe that the compromise
> position is that web services should expose GETtable URIs, but that any
> other non-safe methods can be done in specific method.  The REST principle
> is that all methods have to be generic.  This is the whole enchilada,
> whether you have generic methods or methods in the body.  I could go into
> paragraphs of prose on why I think that my middle-ground approach is
> reasonable, but I think that won't solve the heartburn that the REST folks
> have about using ONLY generic methods.

Yup, that's the impasse alright. 8-)  But there isn't a middle ground
here, unfortunately.  That's why I'm eager to get the architecture
document in front of the TAG.

On that topic, you might be interested in my blog today;

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/1681

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Wednesday, 31 July 2002 15:02:05 UTC