Tim Bray on REST and Web services

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/05/12/SoapAgain

Bang on, as usual, except for the bit where he suggests DaveO, as a TAG
member, goes around admonishing folks for not using GET.  *That*, I'd
like to see. 8-)

[snip]

"POST and GET, Does it Matter? It matters. First of all, if you're going to do anything but just retrieve information, you have to use POST. And if all you're doing is retrieving information, you really really should use GET, even if you could use POST."

[snip]

"REST People (like me and the rest of the W3C TAG) who go around admonishing people to use GET are often said to be disciples of REST. REST is an acronym invented by Roy Fielding, a prominent geek who is chair of the Apache Foundation and chief author of the URI specification and so on. He invented it for his Ph.D. thesis, in which he tried to formalize how the Web works."

[snip]

"From Here On In You, dear readers, have ringside seats! Does the power of naming everything with URIs buy enough to compensate for the inconvenience of having to jam complex requests into them? Does the convenience of packaging up your request in XML buy enough to compensate for the loss of naming power? Is the future of the Web spelt S.W. or W.S. or both or neither? Stay tuned."

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis
  Actively seeking contract work or employment

Received on Tuesday, 13 May 2003 12:52:18 UTC