Comments on Imran's Tech Blog: RESTful Architecture

your site is very nice, i like it!! wellcome to my...

2010-03-29T20:27:59.925-07:00

your site is very nice, i like it!! wellcome to my blog!
http://www.tech24h.us/

Nice hope to see more similar articles

2009-11-29T03:19:43.311-08:00

Nice hope to see more similar articles

@mogsie Firstly, thank you and glad that you liked...

2009-07-11T04:35:08.002-07:00

@mogsie
Firstly, thank you and glad that you liked it...
Secondly, I fully agree that there is scope to always learn where REST is concerned.
Thirdly, the point that you elaborated was the same exact discussion that prompted me to read the theoretical part of the topic.
Its only ironic that I failed to explain properly what I meant when I mentioned "representation format also should be uniform or conform to established standards". I actually wanted to stress that the format depends on domain while we could apply some constraints on them and thats why I mentioned that there should be namespaces and schema for XML nodes. In case of XML when linking resource lets use xlink namespace and schema instead of something custom, that was point for conforming to standards; and knowledge of schema and domain is a must, I could not find a methodology or format where those would not be required, be it XML (custom or standard), HTML or JSON.

Hi, Imran! Great post. Always good to read about...

2009-07-10T13:49:11.006-07:00

Hi, Imran! Great post. Always good to read about REST :-)

Probably the most important lesson I've learned while learning about REST is that there's always something new to learn. You've now outlined what you've read about REST and tried to applied the principle to a set of book resources.

For example, let's take the example of the constrained media type where you mention "that the representation format also should be uniform or conform to established standards". The concept of the constrained media type is open to wide interpretation.

Let's take your book example, you define a media type for your book, let's say application/vnd.imyousuf.book+xml, and document what it means and add a schema and get it working perfectly with JAXB. This approach is possibly the least interoperable, since nobody else in the world will know what to do with that media type.

Then again, you could use application/xml. This way, recipients will know that it's XML, but without prior knowledge to your schema and domain, it won't make any sense.

You could use HTML, and use specific values for rel and class and id and document your usage of these, possibly including a profile attribute. This would make it possible to use any old browser to look at the books. The usefulness is still quite small, since no other software developer will use the same rel, class and id attributes that you do.

A JSON format (or just declaring it as application/json) suffers from the same problem as XML, in that a consumer just gets a data structure, but without prior knowledge it has no idea how to use it.

The best option is to find a media format that fits your domain, so that serendipity may thrve! I think this is really hard, and it's what I'm exploring at the moment. I think microformats, and perhaps RDFa can have a profound effect on how computers can consume HTML, without prior knowledge of your specific formats.

-mogsie-

great article :)

2009-07-09T03:02:06.234-07:00

great article :)

Nice article, the checklist is very noticeable.

2009-07-09T01:46:26.054-07:00

Nice article, the checklist is very noticeable.

@Fazle The problem is not with SOAP protocol itsel...

2009-07-09T01:31:05.610-07:00

@Fazle
The problem is not with SOAP protocol itself, but more with the tools I had to use for SOAP and also the performance, in terms of payload, was not to my satisfaction.

nice writeup. hope to see more article on it. jus...

2009-07-09T01:13:16.341-07:00

nice writeup. hope to see more article on it.
just one question. what particular problem you experienced using SOAP ..

hoping to see more articles on REST .

2009-07-09T00:34:05.118-07:00

hoping to see more articles on REST .