2003/03/16
Sam, in apparent response to my claims that some people see constraints as bad things, writes this;
There are those who appear to advocate a null architectural style with respect to data. Who claim that content type independence is not a bug but a feature. Who imply that few constraints on data is a good thing. Of course, there are no such people, this is only a strawman argument.
Very well. I was hoping to not have to name names, but here are some quotes from some very smart people who don’t understand what an architectural constraint is, or its value (or at least didn’t when they said what I’m quoting 8-), and who are implicitly suggesting that less constraints are better. And FWIW, I never said that anybody was advocating using the null style, only that it was the implicit result when you make arguments such as these.
- “Constraint implies limitation. The way Web services uses layering removes limitations”
- “The criteria should be at the architecture level, not at the implementation level. I would say that web services architecture allows for stateless web services”. Needs to be read in context.
- “As before, there is nothing in web service architecture that precludes caching”. Same message as the last one, but further demonstrates a misunderstanding of software architecture, as I explained in my response.
[…] I’ve said the past few years nearly word for word. For example, he talked about how SOA was effectively the null architectural style. He also talked about the pros and cons of relaxing REST’s constraints, including the very […]