Article:		REST and the Real World
Subject:		Is REST really a subset of Web Services?
Date:		2002-03-18 12:10:08
From:		Sean McRae
Is REST really a subset of XML/SOAP-style Web Services? I think it may be. Consider that WSDL allows one to specify bindings for HTTP GET. Any XML/SOAP web service with this binding can be called via a URI with all the benefits of REST Paul outlines. If you'd like to limit your client access to this type (and why would you?) just remove the other bindings from the WSDL. What REST seem to be missing is a means for self-description. How do I as a client know what URI's are supported? When a new URI has been added to the domain? How do I know what that the range or syntax of a value is for any given parameter is? What date format(s) does the service accept where there's a date value parameter? State code abbreviations or the full name of the state? Is seems a REST-ful web service will need a considerable amount of code that parses and validates parameter values; such work is not needed with the strong type checking available in SOAP-RPC. On the REST-ful client end I'm back to thumbing though (hopefully) up-to-date API documentation to get the syntax of each call. I can have that today without REST ;-) Regards. - Sean

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