UWS as a REST protocol

[Doug Tody]

Hi All -

This sounds very promising, I'm all for it (but you knew I was going to
say that right?).

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Matthew Graham wrote:
> If we are going down this path then I want to strongly reiterate (to
> this group and other IVOA groups) that we do it properly, i.e. pure REST
> interfaces and not the half-baked "well, it uses HTTP GET and verbs"
> that a lot of people mean by REST.

Actually, it is not all that easy to determine what REST really means.
I think it is REST so long as GET URLs are reasonably persistent, are
cacheable, and do not cause side-effects.  This does not necessarily
mean that we cannot have GET URLs which contain parameters (e.g., a DAL
access reference).  I have no problem with using POST for anything which
causes side-affects, or for passing data elements.

	- Doug