Re: the meaning of stateless

Mike Schinkel <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.services.rest
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Apr 24, 2013, at 1:23 PM, Markus Lanthaler <[email protected]> wrote:
> No, it's not their "implicitness" it is because the server has to keep track
> of the clients. The server typically creates a small file (or DB entry) in
> which he puts session information about the client. You need to replicate
> that to all servers if you want to scale such a system.
> 

So earlier in the thread I asked[1] if a shopping cart or transaction that creates a DB entry violates the stateless requirement and the only person who answered said it did not[2]. 

Is he wrong and if so then are RESTful systems not able to do workflow or transactions?  Or is he correct and there is some other nuance that differentiates between a session and a shopping cart or a transaction?
> Yes.. you should also add that a request *must not* depend on a previous
> request (the use of a session ID, e.g., does)
> 

I just asked Mark Baker today about this giving an example transaction that does depend on a previous request[3] which was similar to what was recommended in Richardson & Ruby's REST book. So I'll repeat the above question: are RESTful systems not able to do workflow or transactions?  Or is there some other nuance that differentiates between a session and a shopping cart or a transaction?

I'm not trolling, I'm honestly trying to come up with a way to understand Roy's Rules of REST in a concrete,  objective and unambiguous manner so I can be sure that I'm always employing them correctly and I don't feel I can do that yet.

-Mike

[1] http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/19326
[2] http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/19327
[3] http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/19353
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.