So that whole “contract thang” has popped up again in the echo chamber. I’m going to pick on Steve Jones a little (more 8-), specifically something he says in his latest piece;
Where I do disagree though is whether this is a good or a bad thing to have these camps. Now I’m clearly biased as I’m on the contract side […]
Hold it! Let’s make sure we’re having the right conversation here. It’s not “pro contract” vs. “anti contract”, it’s simply “many contracts” vs “one contract”.
Resume!
I’m absolutely thrilled that Tim has finally grokked REST. AFAIK, he’s the first die-hard Web services type with a strong public persona to realize REST’s (and the Web’s, of course) benefits over WS/SOA/RPC. Bravo, Tim!
I’ve long thought that what was needed in this discussion was new perspectives on the relationship between REST and WS/RPC/etc… that would permit the message to reach more people. Tim’s ably doing his part along those lines with his
followup
posts. I would never have thought to describe things this way.
So, who’s next?
I’ve spent some time over the past couple of months helping Microsoft with RESTful issues for two (soon to be three, I hope) different groups there. One of those is the WCF team, and Omri has just reported on some of it. I’m not sure how much of my input (if any) made it into that release, or if it’s all set for the next release, but there you have it; WCF does REST.
It was quite enjoyable to sit around the table (conference room and sushi table alike!) with Don and Steve in the context of trying to answer the question “How can Microsoft best support RESTful service developers?”, and not have to dwell much on the SOA/WS-vs-REST thing. Lots of love all round. 8-)
I’ll point to the other projects as soon as I know they’ve gone public.
Update; if it wasn’t clear, this was a consulting arrangement through my company, Coactus.
Update 2; the second project has been announced. Here’s more; doesn’t that XML just scream “Yaron”? 8-)
I’ll be well out of range of an IP packet next week when it happens, but next Tuesday marks the seventh anniversary of my first public anti-WS post, to Develop Mentor’s old “soap-discuss” mailing list.
I didn’t realize it until now, but James Snell gets the dubious honour of being the target of that post. It’s like he’s Steve Trachsel to my Mark Mcgwire 8-).
That is all.
Don’s latest on GET is interesting (especially “That’s certainly where I’m investing”!), but I really liked this bit of
Tim Ewald‘s comment;
The solution is a minimal footprint interaction, like a coarse-grained document transfer via a pin-hole, a la’ a Biztalk port. Exposing all your data via GET so anyone can read anything they want (modulo security concerns) and then providing controlled writes through pin-hole ports that consume documents and encapsulate the actual update process.
Bingo! Give the man a cigar.
That said, once you’ve done that for a while you will, in all likelihood (I’ve been there), find the need for the client to have expectations about server-side state changes beyond those offered by POST; PUT and DELETE are two very useful expectations.
Well, maybe not “galore”, but it looks like Leonard and Sam
may have some
competition
on their hands; this one’s Java-specific though.
I wonder what ever happened to Kendall’s?