Bookmark 'stability'

Jan Algermissen <[email protected]> Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:23:01 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.web.services.rest
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi,

one of the obligations a server has in a RESTful system (IMHO
anyway) is to keep those URIs stable that make good bookmarks.
(as in "Cool URIs don't change"). [1]

Some questions keep bugging me:

- Should all URIs a server makes known to clients be considered
  possible bookmarks?
  If not, how do I differentiate between those that are and those
  that are not?

- Given that the applications executed by the clients are not known to
  the server, how can the server possibly know what the steady
  states of all those applications are? And hence, what URIs the
  clients might consider to be bookmarks?

Or is it as simple as

"Bookmarks are resource identifiers from a prior interaction.
They are bread-crumbs. Sometimes they get eaten."  :-)   [2]

Jan


[1] And I find it particularly interesting that in this aspect REST is (implicitly) constraining *over time*. Which no other style does, AFAIK.
[2] http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/13606