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Re: [rest-discuss] Objects at REST...

• From: "Andrzej Jan Taramina" <andrzej@c...>
• To: "Lawrence Oluyede" <l.oluyede@g...>
• Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:42:48 -0500

Lawrence:

> I guess thinking about resources as objects and verbs as methods is
> already within the boundaries of the REST architecture.
> What do you mean specifically?

The power of REST comes from the constraints that it enforces.  There are 
only 4 methods, using HTTP, 5 if you include patch and a few more if you use 
WebDav.  Those rarely map to object methods which are much more prolific in 
any domain model I have seen.  OO does not enforce REST constraints, so 
trying to shoehorn and OO model into a REST approach is suboptimal at best.

REST is not just resources per se, meaning URI-based addressing (which point 
to a conceptual resource), but also implies the representations that are 
returned when you reference a resource (uring a URI). 

Representations could be a direct mapping from OO models, but are unlikely to 
fit the needs of more complex machine to machine integration scenarios, since 
different systems will have different domain/object models, thus 
necessitating transformations between them.  The better way to handle that is 
typically to have a canonical representation format between systems.  It 
resolves the n-squared transformations issue if you don't go that way.

BTW...my comments and focus tends to be oriented to the integration space, 
and not to the Web UI space, the latter being a much simpler issue to solve.
Andrzej Jan Taramina
Chaeron Corporation: Enterprise System Solutions
http://www.chaeron.com

• References:
  • Objects at REST...
    • From: "Andrzej Jan Taramina" <andrzej@c...>