Web Things, by Mark Baker

Another good article from Joe. I left a comment, but wanted to repost it here, since I think this is the most succinct description I’ve offered for explaining this critical point.

Nice job again Joe, but I think you’re a little (and I do mean *little* 8-) too rough on the existing service when you say “This is an RPC protocol trying to run over HTTP, and that misalignment is where the problems arise”. With the ListMyQueues and Read operations, putting them in a URI such that a GET returns the data *is* perfectly RESTful. This is because when in URI form, the effective operation – that which the client asks be done, and expects is done when receiving a successful response – is GET, not ListMyQueues.

It’s very(!) easy to misunderstand this point; the same point which is also, I believe, the principle impediment which prevents proponents of document oriented Web services from realizing that REST and the Web is what they’ve been trying to build.