Hypermedia vs. data

Greetings,

I recall some discussions with Eric, and perhaps others, in which
claims roughly equivalent to "REST is good if you have hypermedia, and
not if you don't" were made, to which I tried to explain that hypermedia
was a form of solution, not a precondition.

While responding to a recent offline discussion, I realized that there's
a very simple example of the difference between hypermedia and data.

Here's an example of "data", as you might see in a document-centric
use of SOAP;

<invoice>
  <item productid="439843434"/>
  <item productid="348787492"/>
  ...
</invoice>

Here's the hypermedia version of that;

<invoice>
  <item productid="http://someco.example.org/product/439843434"/>
  <item productid="http://someco.example.org/product/348787492"/>
  ...
</invoice>

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis