RE: Roy's ApacheCon presentation

But people want a little more power over their interfaces than just
GET/POST/PUT/DELETE. They like to be able to use POST to tell a resource a
little more information about how some posted information should be
processed. After all, a resource might be able to do multiple things.

Anne

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On
> Behalf Of Mark Baker
> Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 12:08 PM
> To: Champion, Mike
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Roy's ApacheCon presentation
>
>
>
> Hi Mike,
>
> On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 08:23:33AM -0700, Champion, Mike wrote:
> > > If you don't buy that argument, would you agree that having less
> > > interfaces means easier integration?  i.e. that it's easier if all the
> > > insurance companies agree on a standard interface than it would be if
> > > they didn't?
> >
> > I don't see any evidence that this is true.  CORBA, HTTP,  etc.
> > deal with the protocols for shipping data around; IDL and WSDL
> > deal with interface definitions, XML deals with the data format
> > and encoding issues.
>
> That's not true.  HTTP defines the interface, the same way IDL or
> WSDL does.  Transport protocols, like TCP, do the "shipping data
> around" for HTTP.
>
> > > If so, would you also agree that if banking and CRM
> > > companies could agree to wrap themselves in the same interface, that
> > > this would further reduce integration costs?  And if yes to that, then
> > > wouldn't the ultimate interface be one that could wrap all systems?
> >
> > I'm afraid we have to get into the S-word ("semantics" ... shudder).
> > CORBA assumes that someone has mapped the meaning of of the interaction
> > onto methods and arguments, REST assumes that the meaning of
> the interaction
> > is encoded as a "document".
>
> No, REST assumes that the meaning of the interaction has been mapped to
> methods and arguments as well.  Just the same methods and arguments as
> everybody else (uniform).
>
> If we want an apples-to-apples, no red herrings comparison here, we can
> ignore data semantics, because both styles have exactly the same problem
> to overcome in this regard; once you've got data, how do you process it?
>
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.   http://www.markbaker.ca
>
>    Will distribute objects for food
>