Re: ATOM Pub vs. JSON vs. ...?

Kristian Rink wrote:
> 
> Am 29.05.2012 20:09, schrieb Philippe Rathé:
> > how could be atompub dead? People are just starting to understand
> > REST, how could someone choose atompub when he doesn't understand
> > REST?
> 
> Well yes; yet I see people who deal with REST hardly dealing with
> Atom / APP. Most of the times indeed it ends up being some
> proprietary XML or, more likely, some JSON media type being
> considered "better suited", less overhead to deal with, easier to
> deliver custom data structures. What they don't usually say (or see,
> for that matter) is that, ultimately, again it ends up with systems
> which seem somewhat tightly coupled, JavaScript code in the browser
> or (even worse) external applications depending upon a custom data
> structure which might or might not be required to undergo more or
> less fundamental changes all along the way.
>

Heheh... don't get me started.  ;-)  I still think this is the most
important, and least-understood, concept in all of REST:

"The trade-off, though, is that a uniform interface degrades
efficiency, since information is transferred in a standardized form
rather than one which is specific to an application's needs. The REST
interface is designed to be efficient for large-grain hypermedia data
transfer, optimizing for the common case of the Web, but resulting in
an interface that is not optimal for other forms of architectural
interaction."

If you can model your system as one of hypertext documents, then you
don't need to make design tradeoffs in the name of less overhead, which
tend to negate the benefits of REST.  So, I say go for it with Atom.

Maybe I'm just grumpy because yet another website I frequent now
features a broken back button, paging back through script after script
until finally, on the 4th or 5th click, user intent is finally
respected.  Or, because I can no longer right-click Google results to
copy an URL, or any number of proliferating faults which break the Web
by going against the "natural" architecture which are making it *less*
usable and accessible, thanks to gratuitous use of JS.

-Eric