[Webservices] example REST webservice

[Hank Ratzesberger]

Thanks, I was piping in to say that I am on the list and 
continue to be interested in all that develops.

I am familiar with the HTML screen scraping methods (with 
things like the Perl HTMLParser) and I agree that the 
so called REST style is much better.  

XSL is indeed complicated because it is declarative and 
uses recursion, but along with XQuery, is powerful 
and extensible.

One thing I was hinting at, is that a REST style repository 
could be accessible from either a browser or a service.  Indeed
with an xml-stylesheet instruction on every resource, it 
is the same site.

I think a key issue is whether your architecture is built 
around Java or C++ (objects) or XML, and similarly, if you
are trying to create specialized/synchronized services or if
you are trying to publish a repository. I hope to have a more
complete example of the latter in the next couple months.

Cheers,
Hank

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joanna Muench" <joanna at iris.washington.edu>
To: "IRIS WebServices List" <webservices at iris.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Webservices] example REST webservice


> 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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>> 
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