On 24/02/2009, at 10:11 PM, Robert Dionne wrote:
I read this thesis ages ago, and technically you are correct, if somewhat pedantic. I think CouchDB captures the just of being REST- ful and certainly from a marketing perspective it's timely.
That's why I say it's a marketing issue. Surely we shouldn't copy Microsoft's marketing tactics and deliberately misuse a term for marketing reasons. The site should say 'HTTP API'.
When I mention to potential customers that CouchDB database are accessed with URIs they say "oh it uses this new REST stuff, cool". Often we have little choice over how the world takes an idea and runs with it.
But we don't have to be complicit. And remember this isn't about the world taking an *idea*. It's about people wanting a cool label to stick on their project, even if the label doesn't fit.
What term would you suggest for a service that fulfills Fielding's definition? Certainly the benefits of being 'RESTful' according to his definition don't flow on to CouchDB, because it's NOT actually RESTful.
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