February 2010 Archives

Time to dust off my microphone and bring up a couple of topics on REST and the Web Architecture
- Versioning, or "Cool URIs don't change -- but my data format does!"
- Why the Web Architecture could use a Programming Model for the Enterprise

Which I'll try to get to this weekend.

For now, I leave you with two things:

First, reflecting on Wiliams' recent Square Peg, REST Hole, I draw from the archives, What are the benefits of WS-* or proprietary services?

Let's keep our eye on the prize. REST is a style aimed at extensible, low entry-barrier, multi-organizational, confederate information sharing and communication. I note that most IT organizations are confederacies, adopting a federal or feudal governance model.

The Web Architecture itself (MIME types, HTTP, URIs) provides a much-needed stable intermediate form for interoperability among many different systems and applications -- something that an general-purpose orientation, like SOA, doesn't really provide. Or, fitting for RESTafarians, it is a shared hallucination ;-)

Not every system, or layer of an enterprise's architecture, has the same requirements for scalability or interoperability. The post from 2007 highlights such examples.

Secondly, the song, which ruled my college years in Canada....