[Webservices] example REST webservice

[Joanna Muench]

Thanks for the links, Hank. Nice site and very interesting article.

The context in which O'Reilly places web services in his "Web 2.0" list 
struck me as being very relevant to the SOAP/REST discussion. In "Web 
1.0" the most common method of programatically extracting data from an 
online source was screen scraping - manually creating an HTTP call 
(either GET or POST) and then parsing the returned HTML. Having done 
just that for a shopping comparison company (Netbot) early in the 
dot-com era, I know from experience it was a painful and fragile 
process. As soon as the merchant changed their site, even slightly, the 
script would break (strangely enough, Netbot was never profitable). REST 
is a huge improvement for such tasks.

By such tasks, I mean querying for data using a limited number of 
variables, with the expectation of retrieving information of moderate 
complexity or size. If the desired output is in HTML, all the better (as 
long as you're okay with XSL - it makes some people I know break out in 
hives). But, like everything in IT, there is no one solution to all 
problems. For instance, if you want to ingest the XML into Java objects, 
you may need a schema to create the object bindings, at which point 
you're half-way to SOAP. Need to stream lots of data - you probably 
don't want to be operating in the web services sphere at all.

The challenge (and the fun) of working in IT is coming up with as light 
weight a solution to a problem as is feasible. Just about as light 
weight as they come, REST is the most appropriate technology for many 
problems. And it beats screen-scraping hands down!

Any other REST services out there? Or services that considered REST but 
ended up with SOAP?

Joanna Muench


Hank Ratzesberger wrote:
> Sorry, here is the missing link:
> 
> http://tpm.nees.ucsb.edu/feeds/
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hank Ratzesberger" 
> <hankr at crustal.ucsb.edu>
> To: "IRIS WebServices List" <webservices at iris.washington.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 2:37 PM
> Subject: Re: [Webservices] example REST webservice
> 
> 
>> An interesting article by Tim O'Reilly discussing the so called "Web 
>> 2.0" says that REST fits well into the its lighter-weight, easier to 
>> adapt/append principles:
>> Similarly, Amazon.com's web services are provided in two forms: one 
>> adhering to the formalisms of the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) 
>> web services stack, the other simply providing XML data over HTTP, in 
>> a lightweight approach sometimes referred to as REST (Representational 
>> State Transfer). While high value B2B connections (like those between 
>> Amazon and retail partners like ToysRUs) use the SOAP stack, Amazon 
>> reports that 95% of the usage is of the lightweight REST service.
>>
>> http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228
>>
>> One thing about REST is you can look at them with a browser. This 
>> delivers the list of video streams with an <?xsl-stylesheet ?> 
>> instruction so that browsers render formatted
>> html (but view/source and you'll see it's XML).
>>
>> --Hank
>>
>> Hank Ratzesberger
>> NEES Programmer
>> Institute for Crustal Studies
>> University of California, Santa Barbara
>> 805.893.8042
>> 805.893.8649 (fax)
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joanna Muench" 
>> <joanna at iris.washington.edu>
>> To: <webservices at iris.washington.edu>
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 10:14 AM
>> Subject: [Webservices] example REST webservice
>>
>>
>>> While we mostly covered SOAP web services at the workshop, there are 
>>> currently more REST services available. I was at the FGIT meeting 
>>> last week (Forum for Geoscience Infrastructure) and attended a lively 
>>> discussion on SOAP vs. REST. Like so many of these things, the answer 
>>> was "it depends".
>>>
>>> One of the participants showed me how his group is using REST within 
>>> their web site: http://www.dlese.org/dds/services/. The web site also 
>>> includes a nice JSP template with examples.
>>>
>>> Joanna
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Webservices mailing list
>>> Webservices at iris.washington.edu
>>> http://www.iris.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/webservices
>>
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