RE: SOAP & REST

Hi Mark,

I find myself tending to agree with Noah here.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org]
> Sent: 07 February 2002 04:23
> To: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com
> Cc: mnot@mnot.net; skw@hplb.hpl.hp.com; xml-dist-app@w3.org
> Subject: Re: SOAP & REST
> 
> 
> > The only difference I see per web architecture between
> > 
> > http://numbers.com/multiply?inputnumber1="3"+inputnumber2="4"
> > 
> > and 
> > 
> >
http://numbers.com/?operation="multiply"+inputnumber1="3"+inputnumber2="4"
> > 
> > is that we can guess that to implement both multiplication and division,

> > the first style would result in two separate parameterized web resources

> > (a multiplying resource, and a dividing resource) while the second would

> > use a single parameterized resource (an arithmetic resource).  I don't
see 
> > the two as deeply different from a web architecture point of view.
> 
> The difference is that in the former form, a user doesn't know whether
                                               ^^^^person, browser or
program?
> the operation being performed is multiplication or division.

Hmmm... if I were using it to calculate my taxes that would seem like a bad
thing to me.

> In the latter form, the client is required to specify the desired
> operation.

I find this a little perplexing... on one level these are just large
'opague' strings.

You seem to be suggesting that in one case a "client" needs to "know" what
arithmetic operation is "being performed" and in the other case it doesn't.
What I don't understand here is how it can be argued that the sequence of
characters 'm', 'u', 'l', 't', 'i', 'p','l' and 'e'  has any more or less
significance to the client depending on whether it is preceded by a '/' and
followed by a '?' than when it is preceded by the character sequence
'/','?','o','p','e','r','a','t','i','o','n', '=' and '"' and followed by '"'
and '+'. 

> MB
> -- 
> Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc.
> Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.      mbaker@planetfred.com
> http://www.markbaker.ca   http://www.planetfred.com

Regards

Stuart

Received on Thursday, 7 February 2002 04:06:59 UTC