mca blog

i read an excellent article by Subbu Allamaraju this morning on building RESTful applications. this one para sets that stage nicely:

Distributed applications using HTTP as an application protocol, and built RESTfully, do have a contract, but of a different nature and kind. We need to know what to look for and where. Along the same lines, if we were to come up with a description language, it can not be similar to WSDL or WADL. My goal in this article is to answer the following questions.

• Why is not there a standard descriptions language for RESTful applications yet?
• How does a contract for RESTful applications looks like?
• What kind of software do we need to build that can understand and take advantage of such a contract?
• If we decide to come up with a machine-readable description, how might it look like?

Let me begin with an example.

what follows is a clear and concise narrative that walks through the process of discovering, defining, and documenting RESTful interactions between client and server. Subbu's writing is accessible and right on the money. if you've been flirting w/ REST, but aren't quite 'there' yet, this is a great resource.

thanks Subbu!