REST Easy

Author(s): Peter Lacey

Awareness of REST as a simpler and more scalable means of delivering network accessible services continues to rise, as does frustration with the complexity and interoperability issues of the web services framework (WSF). Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for distributed systems that provides constraints on component interaction in order to maximize the scalability and evolvability of networked applications. The most ubiquitous implementation of the REST style is the Web itself.

This workshop will provide an explanation of REST and how it compares to SOAP and the WSF. We will discuss the architectural underpinnings of REST: identifiable resources, a uniform interface, resource representations, statelessness, and hypermedia. A working, RESTful system will be demonstrated using the Java Restlet Framework. Workshop attendees will come away with a solid understanding of REST, knowledge of how to design and build RESTful applications, as well as guidelines for evaluating REST vs. SOAP for enterprise systems.

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