UWS as a REST protocol

[Matthew Graham]

Hi Guy,

I think that this looks very promising and is line with similar thoughts 
that I have had about a RESTful interface for VOSpace - I've started 
writing these up and will hopefully have time to finish this some time 
soon.

One general comment I have is that if we are going to do REST then let's 
do it properly and make proper use of the full HTTP verbs: GET, PUT, 
POST and DELETE. These are fully supported under HTTP v1.1 and any 
programming language worth its salt can handle them. The issue as you 
note is browser support but rich web clients will be based on JavaScript 
or Ruby or something similar which can also handle these.

My other concern is security. With SOAP-based web services we have 
WS-Security to make us feel comfortable that we are safe; with REST, the 
only real "security standard" is HTTPS - are we happy that this is 
sufficient? I'm unhappy about relying on transport-level security but 
the only alternative is that we invent some message-level security 
mechanism of our own for IVOA REST services: note that the Amazon S3 
service does not regard HTTPS as sufficient and has its own 
message-level security.
   
    Cheers,

    Matthew

Guy Rixon wrote:
> Hi,
>
> there has been a lot of debate recently in the industry about SOAP vs. REST as
> the basis of web services.  I've written an IVOA Note on how UWS might be
> presented as a REST service: please see
>
> http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/UWS-REST.html
>
> Based on the worked examples in the note, and on a prototype I'm working on,
> the chances for making a good, RESTful UWS are high. I reckon it would be more
> useful - simpler, easier, more-generally applicable - than a SOAP-based
> protocol. In particular, I like the idea of adding UWS options to protocols
> like SIAP and TAP without lathering them up.
>
> My personal preference is to work, from here on, just on the RESTful form of
> UWS and to abandon the SOAP version. Since, AFAIK, I'm the only one who has
> writen any SOAP UWS code I think this should be OK. Please let me know your
> views.
>
> Cheers,
> Guy
>
> Guy Rixon 				        gtr at ast.cam.ac.uk
> Institute of Astronomy   	                Tel: +44-1223-337542
> Madingley Road, Cambridge, UK, CB3 0HA		Fax: +44-1223-337523
>
>