Web Things, by Mark Baker

RESTwiki finds a new home
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I contributed some of my WWW2002 photos to the very cool W3 Photo project last week, and stumbled upon some others there that reminded me of what an awesome time I had in Honolulu. There was this one party in particular, at the “home” (read; “estate”) of Kevin Hughes, that I’m sure I’ll never forget. Located on top (and I do mean top) of one of the rolling mountains behind Honolulu city, it had the most spectacular view; you could see all the way from Diamond Head on your left, to Pearl Harbour on your right, with Honolulu seemingly below you; breath-taking.

Later in the evening, Kevin introduced a friend of his, Makana, who proceeded to enchant us on his guitar amoungst a mini-studio Kevin had setup in his living room. Makana told us that he played in “slack key” style which I hadn’t heard about before, but fully enjoyed … I think; I’m not certain that I was able to identify that particular style in amoungst the melange of styles he exhibited, primarily (to my untrained ear) classical, blue grass, and folk. Really really wonderful. With the warm, gentle breeze blowing through the house as Kevin opened many of the windows, most of us were hypnotized.

But, as if all that wasn’t enough fun, one of Kevin’s friends who I had seen dragging in a cooler earlier, cracked it open to reveal a damned fine wine collection which included a bottle of 1990 vintage Penfold’s Grange. Despite a corking incident, I managed a fairly healthy glass which I nursed for the next hour. Wow wow.

Anyhow, I was disappointed to learn while looking up Makana’s web site, that I missed him in Toronto a couple of weeks ago. Though perhaps that’s for the best; Massey Hall just can’t top a breezy mountain top paradise on Oahu, and a cosy, private performance for 25. But FWIW, if he’s coming your way, and you enjoy guitar, I’d highly recommend seeing him.

P.S. Damn I miss travelling.

Update; Savas, you suck 8-(

Hmm, so if, as Anthony Hanson wrote, “Great Burgundy smells of shit”, do I have to head over to the nearest barnyard to refill this thing? I’m guessing that this will never place a trip to Nuits St. Georges.
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“Why is SOA likely to succeed where CORBA failed?” – I wish somebody would answer that for me in software architectural terms.
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Oops, good catch Patrick. Yes, an unsafe GET isn’t good (though your explanation seems to be describing idempotency of GET which is a side effect of safety).
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Note to self; write an article on how Internet media types, namespaces, must-ignore and must-understand conspire to provide a 97% solution to the document versioning problem
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Mark Baker, poster boy for the TAG’s httpRange-14 issue. How’s that for Google-gaming? 8-)
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Yes folks, it’s really that simple. Document exchange as state transfer; accept no substitute.
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Via Dave Orchard. LOL! I haven’t laughed this hard in a while.
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Via Savas, I noticed a good post from Eric Newcomer;

The doc/literal style would seem to be the most abstract or the most “loosely coupled,” since it does not include data typing (although data typing is provided by an associated XML Schema) and does not include a method name in the message.

Wow, I’ve been saying exactly that – “not include a method in the message” – for years now. Good to see Eric on board! 8-)

But unfortunately that’s not the whole story. For the kind of loose coupling that folks really seem to want, simply removing the method from the message isn’t sufficient. The method has to be removed, as Don Box would say, from the contract. Or, put another way, give all services the same contract (trust me, it’s true, and it’s worth spending considerable time understanding why)

Another way – a software architectural way – of looking at this, is to ask what the different architectural constraints are at work between a message without the method in the body while still having service-specific contracts/interfaces, and an architectural style where all contracts/interfaces are the same. If you can’t find an architectural explanation for the loose coupling, then it’s not there. I’ve mused about this recently.

And there you have it, the principle difference between SOA and REST, and the reason why I’ve also been saying that REST is what Web services folks have been looking for all along.