On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 3:58 AM, Umashanthi Pavalanathan <umashant...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Devs, > > As you know I am working on adding social features to PhotArk in the rest > branch. > To proceed further with the implementation, I have to add the social > features in the UI. When working on this, I came across the requirement of > exposing the back-end functionalities as REST services. As you know, > implementation in the trunk uses Apache Tuscany to integrate and expose the > functionality as JSON-RPC. Similarly in the rest branch we have the > requirement of exposing the back-end functionality as REST services. For > this purpose, I looked into three options: > (1) Apache Shindig [0] > (2) Apache Tuscany [1] > (3) Apache Wookie [2] > > As we have discussed earlier in the mailing list [3], Apache Shindig > provides a reference implementation for the OpenSocial specification and > provide JSON-RPC & REST APIs. But these APIs are only limited to the > concepts/services in the OpenSocial specification and currently there seems > to be no plans for extending further. So, using Apache Shindig, we can > integrate the back-end social features as REST services; but it is only > limited to this purpose. Since in the context of PhotArk, there are several > other functionalities/concepts like Albums, etc, using Shindig will not > cater for all the requirements. > > On the other hand, Apache Tuscany, can be used to expose the functionalities > as REST services without any limitations and it's usage in the PhotArk trunk > assures that it can satisfy all the requirements in PhotArk. > > Apaceh Wookie also provides REST API. But it is particularly designed to > facilitate building widgets. Similar to Shindig, Wookie also has limited > support for converting all the functionalities in PhotArk into REST > services. Even though Wookie has the support for UI widgets, I do not see > any plans to make PhotArk as a widget based application in the near future. > So the REST integration facility provided by Wookie is limited in the > context of PhotArk. > > After analyzing these three options, Apache Tuscany seems to be promising > for me, to support all the requirements of PhotArk, related to exposing REST > services. > > I kindly invite you all to proceed further with this discussion. Your > valuable input to this discussion is highly appreciated. > > Looking forward to hear from you all. > > > [0] http://shindig.apache.org/ > [1] http://tuscany.apache.org/ > [2] http://incubator.apache.org/wookie/ > [3] > http://www.mail-archive.com/photark-dev@incubator.apache.org/msg01141.html > > Thanks, > ~Umashanthi >
I had the impression that the integration with Apache Shindig would provide us much more benefits, but after some investigation I don't believe that is true anymore. A REST interface based on Tuscany should give us enough to build a solid social ui. Having said that, we might look at the URI defined by Shindig/OpenSocial to see if we can follow the same standard which would be beneficial for any future integration. -- Luciano Resende http://people.apache.org/~lresende http://twitter.com/lresende1975 http://lresende.blogspot.com/
