Re: Web service question...

[Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Larry, thank you for your simplified explanation of REST. It's congruent with the doctoral dissertations on REST that one may come across but more clear and easier to understand.


________________________________
From: Larry Ducie <larry_ducie@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: RPG400 <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 5:12 AM
Subject: Re: Web service question...


Hi Robert,

I must confess to being ignorant of your needs here: You state "This link is called repeatedly for all the items on a document." and I don't know what you mean. I have lots of questions:

What is the document?
Where is the document?
How is the link called repeatedly?
What is making these repeated calls?
Why do you think a RPG program using HTTPAPI would be better than the current implementation?
Is the document currently processed within a RPG program?

If the links are called through a browser via anchor tags or AJAX calls and you are talking about moving those calls to the server - think carefully before blocking the service in such a way.

(I'm here guessing because I don't know what you are doing, or what you want to do)


But while I'm here... there seems to be some general confusion about web services, which is not usually helped when such things as SOAP and REST are bandied about. :-)

Lets make it clear:

1. A web service is a service provided by one machine that can be accessed by another machine over a network
2. SOAP is a protocol, not a service
3. REST is an architecture, not a protocol, nor a service

REST is an architecture that allows the client to be "at rest" and only access services when required. When changes occur that need to be propagated to a remote service the client is in a brief state of flux and then goes back to being "at rest". The use of the HTTP 1.1 protocol is a classic implementation of a RESTful architecture - your browser is "at rest" until you click something, or a time-based function fires up. It then performs a required task (retrieve a resource, or post some information) and then goes back to being "at rest".

I've probably not helped much, but I think I'd need more info to be really useful. Unless your post was rhetorical.

Cheers

Larry Ducie