UWS as a REST protocol

[Doug Burke]

On Feb 26, 2007, at 2:32 PM, Doug Tody wrote:

> 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

Well, I've just been reading about STREST [1], to add yet more  
acronym-induced confusion to the whole "what is REST" discussion [2]  
(and to whether it actually is different to REST [3]).

Cheers,
A different Doug

[1]  
http://duncan-cragg.org/blog/post/strest-service-trampled-rest-will- 
break-web-20/
[2]  
http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=0df3b480-0ea2 
-4b2e-8414-a0b67309dceb
[3]  
http://duncan-cragg.org/blog/post/strest-service-trampled-rest-will- 
break-web-20/#comment-82