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

"Mark Baker" <distobj@acm.org> writes:
>
> Any constrained interface you come up with will either be less general
> than the REST interface (by definition), or equivalent to it.

:-).

So there can never be any single interface that is more general than
the REST one? Wow.

> CRUD is
> less general.  For example, that mapping above fails to expose POST
> functionality which permits for things like data processing, annotation,
> insertion, etc..

Update can do all that stuff. So can query BTW (just invoke a UDF).

> > I don't know what "GET on mailto:foo@bar.com" means because I don't have
a binding.
>
> You don't need a binding, you can look up its meaning in the HTTP
> specification.  It means, retrieve a representation of the resource
> identified by that URI.

Yes, except that that concept may not make any sense whatsoever for
a given URI scheme.

> >  It could mean "get the mail for foo@bar.com".
>
> Well, technically, it only means what I said above.  But it could
> certainly be *used* to return the mail for foo@bar.com.  Good call.
>
> >  I also don't know whether that's safe or not.
>
> Why not?  GET can be assumed safe by a Web client.

Really? What if the protocol you're using to GET is POP3 and the
message gets deleted after you GET it? What if the protocol you're
using to GET is IMAP and the server remembers that the messsage
has been "read" already. Neither of those are side-effect free
and thereby not safe.

While one can certainly provide creative bindings for REST verbs
for SMTP/POP/IMAP operations, IMO that's pretty arbitrary. There's
no underlying "Web method" concept in those protocols unless I've
missed something really fundamental.

Sanjiva.

Received on Tuesday, 13 July 2004 00:42:25 UTC