Hi Anne, > Good questions. The way I see it, support for REST has more to do with > hype than anything else -- especially the way it's been implemented. > (which really is POX rather than REST)
As I said in my reply, in Axis2 we do support more than POX- we also support GETs. But in principle I agree with your comment .. REST is full of hype these days. In Axis2 we *do not* do full REST (with etag support and all .. although I am working with Ruwan Linton on a caching module that will support it). > There is a growing backlash against the complexity of SOAP and WS-*, > and in response, people are looking for a simpler, more native-Web > approach to services. And that's POX -- Plain Old XML over HTTP. HTTP > is a very powerful and scalable application protocol. It supports > clean separation of header and application payload. It provides a > means to support self-describing messages (using MIME types). It Now you've drunk too much REST coolaid Anne ;-) .. MIME is not self describing when it comes to XML .. saying application/xml simply isn't enough to "describe" the XML; you do need a schema of some sort. > supports security (HTTPS) and stateful sessions (cookies). Many argue > that the SOAP envelope and all the SOAP Headers are just a lot of > extra clutter. And for many applications, that's true. POX is > absolutely adequate. +1. > But POX does not automatically imply REST. REST is an architectural > style -- one that is resource-oriented rather the service-oriented. If > you think that you can take a service-oriented application and > generate a resource-oriented interface for it, then you really don't > understand REST. If you want a RESTful system, it requires a different > design model -- the two architectural styles (service vs > resource-oriented) are fundamentally different. Big +1. > Let me explain using Mark Baker's favorite example -- lightbulbs. > Let's say you want to design a system that allows you to turn > lightbulbs on and off. And just to make sure people understand- when this example was discussed in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/service-orientated-architecture/, there was a thread of like 100 messages that got quite a diversity of opinions. Moral of the story: achieving REST style architectures properly is just as much of an art as achieving SOA properly. Sanjiva. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
