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Re: ANN: Building Web Services the REST Way

• To: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
• Subject: Re: ANN: Building Web Services the REST Way
• From: Rich Salz <rsalz@d...>
• Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 11:25:27 -0400
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• References: <3D22F197.40ADB79E@m...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0rc2) Gecko/20020510

> http://www.xfront.com/REST-Web-Services.html

I read through this and have a couple of questions.

1.  Why isn't the reference to Roy's thesis a hyperlink?
2.  Is it a REST "requirement" that submitPO returns a URI for the 
stored document that the submittor can later modify?  In the normal 
course of business you don't get to modify your PO willy-nilly...
3.  I don't understand the rationale for principal #2; what's the
reason to prefer one of these three?
	.../parts/345
	../part?234
	../part?id=345
Yes, I removed the "get" word; once I do that, what's the issue?
4.  Suppose I have a "pricequote" feature that takes a product and 
version.  An implication of #2 is that REST wants me to arbitrarily 
order those those attributes, as in
	getprice/ms-office/98
	getprice/ms-office/xp
but why not
	getprice/xp/ms-office
?  And does REST tell me how to specify the ordering?  Either way, it 
seems arbitrary and limited compared to
	getprice?prod=ms-office&version=xp
doesn't it?

For item #4, just a clarification: the issue is that the GET doesn't 
modify the resource; I wouldn't expect a "getweather" URL to return the 
same thing all the time.  Right?

#6 seems to contradict classic distributed systems practice (and, say, 
gigabit networking) which seeks to minimize round-trips.  Doesn't it?

Suppose I need to fetch a resource such that only the endpoints can now 
the item being retrieved and the response.  I can do the response easily 
enough, send xml-encrypted data.  How do I send the request in a REST 
fashion?  I think this is beyond the scope of REST, but am not sure; any 
  thoughts?  (Imagine requesting medical records; because of my "only 
endpoints" requirement -- imposed by us HIPPA regulations -- SSL will 
not suffice.)

 >REST describes what makes the Web work well.

Ah, the crux of my problem with the REST camp.  Post hoc propter hoc.

Thanks.
	/r$

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