Re: Issue 169: Propose http method in the operation interface to simplify http binding.

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 10:12:55 -0700
Mark Nottingham <mark.nottingham@bea.com> wrote:
> Because it may be desirable to model applications as state transfer, 
> even if this isn't advertised in a way that HTTP implementations (e.g., 
> caches) can take advantage of (i.e., the HTTP method). State transfer 
> is a higher-level and more useful abstraction than simple messaging.

Umm.  Perhaps a different model needs to be used, then?

I don't think WSDL does, or was designed to, describe REST-oriented
interactions.  It describes methods, which are named, and one of our
recently hot issues was specifically related to the question of
identifying the method invoked.  Note that I am not claiming that these
are RPC methods (they may be pub/sub methods, as an extreme
counterexample).

Although this may cause the mob to rise up and lynch me, I also fail to be
convinced that REST is applicable outside the narrow scope of HTTP.  HTTP
was, of course, designed (at least in part) around those concepts. 
Possibly Atom is, too.  No other protocol, so far as I know, is, and the
mappings of REST to those protocols are hugely less than convincing. 
Under that circumstance, REST-specific attributes/properties belong in
HTTP (or HTTP-based) bindings (or perhaps someone wants to create a
generic "REST" binding?).

So I remain strongly opposed to setting HTTP attributes on the interface.

Amy!
(cleaned up cc list ... could folks please try to do this from time to
time?)
-- 
Amelia A. Lewis
Senior Architect
TIBCO/Extensibility, Inc.
alewis@tibco.com

Received on Thursday, 1 July 2004 13:35:18 UTC