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Re: REST has too many verbs

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: REST has too many verbs
• From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@r...>
• Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 17:12:27 -0500
• In-reply-to: <3C683493.BACD8F73@p...>
• Organization: Red Bridge Interactive, Inc.
• References: <42WS791U9352YVXUB0UONHB9H61XS.3c682dec@MChamp> <3C683493.BACD8F73@p...>

On Monday 11 February 2002 04:16 pm, Paul Prescod wrote:
> That's a rhetorical strategy that won't work. Whatever virtues we
> point out of REST, RPC people will point out that you can do the
> same thing in RPC if you just structure your method calls right. For
> instance you could use a few verbs, as REST does. You could make
> them generic, as REST does. You could always pass a URI as the first
> argument. You could build client-side messages as XML documents and
> pass them through RPC as content-bodies, as HTTP does. etc. You
> could reinvent it all in a new syntax two levels above HTTP. And it
> would work.

Actually, I think Mike has pointed out the key here though: REST is an 
*architecture*. If you used RPC to *implement* REST, it would be just 
as well be called REST as REST using HTTP. I think that is a crucial 
point.

The REST *architecture* has merits for some classes of problem, no 
doubt about it. I don't think anyone would claim that it is applicable 
to *all* classes of problem. REST over HTTP is equally usable for some 
subset of the problem domain to which REST is applicable, and equally, 
I don't think anyone would claim that it is applicable to *all* REST 
problems.

This really reminds me of the DOM days....  people can't see the 
architecture for the implementation, or the implementation for the 
problem domain.

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>

• References:
  • Re: REST has too many verbs
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • Re: REST has too many verbs
    • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>

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