Three cheers for GET services

[Doug Tody]

There has been an ongoing philosophical debate in Web architecture circles
about REST vs SOAP which is relevant here.  Try doing a google search on
"REST SOAP" (REST = the "REpresentational State Transfer" model).   Doug


On Sun, 6 Jun 2004, Roy Williams wrote:

> Three cheers for GET services
> 
> (This subject line is just to stir up the SOAP fundamentalists). As I start
> moving to the world of SOAP, I want to know how to do all the nifty things I
> used to be able to do with GET.
> 
> (1) Please find below an email that I sent to myself yesterday. It is a pointer
> to a GET-based web service, and that is why it is easy to send the email. Just
> click on it in your email spool. It is a virtual finding chart, bringing not
> just a picture, but a browser of many layers and other drilldown features. It is
> nifty to send a complete "service request" to a colleague, and all they need to
> do is to click on it.
> 
> But when we are running things on SOAP services, how can we do the same thing?
> Suppose I write to my colleague saying "use the http://blah service with x=2 and
> y=3", how long would it take them to figure out how to see the result?
> 
> (2) On the same topic is the question of partial arguments to SOAP services. For
> example, under the GET system, I can *derive* a service from another. If service
> http://blah.edu/siap? returns images of all bandpasses, then the new service
> http://blah.edu/siap?BANDPASS=z can be derived (by simple concatenation!) that
> returns only z-images.
> 
> Or, for example, a client could go to a login screen at http://blah.edu/login
> and get in return email a URL containing his session number, such as
> http://blah.edu/login?s=6ac3768ce8ff8. Clicking on this completes the login
> process.
> 
> (3) There are a lot of nice read/parse qualities about GET requests. It would be
> nice to have both GET and SOAP at the same time. To somehow send keyword-value
> by the GET channel, but the complex objects and binary through the SOAP channel.
> 
> People know and trust the GET method. Crossing the bridge to SOAP should be
> possible by gradual steps.
> 
> Roy
> 
> --------
> California Institute of Technology
> roy at caltech.edu
> 626 395 3670
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Roy Williams" <roy at cacr.caltech.edu>
> To: "Roy Williams" <roy at cacr.caltech.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, June 05, 2004 9:10 PM
> Subject: PQ/sdss stack in VS
> 
> Finding chart PQ-2004-05-18
> 
> >
> http://virtualsky.org/servlet/Page?F=1&RA=230&DE=-.20000&Exp=Go+Here&T=4&P=11&S=11&X=1687&Y=2043&W=4&Z=-1&M=1
> 
>