After reading more about REST, I think I have a pretty good understanding of it now. And, I think I like the REST philosophy (or is it architecture?). When you think about it, REST is almost a natural extension of the current Web. Think about HTML screen-scraping, then think about making the screen-scraping unnecessary by having the server send cleaned-up XML instead of HTML. You could go further with REST, either in the direction of WebDAV, or in the direction of advanced HTTP use. As an example of the latter, clients and servers could take advantage of content negotiation in HTTP to deliver content in the form that the client can make the best use of. This feature of REST, of course, is a significant one, as it allows graceful upgrades to services.
Now, I'm thinking that REST would be a good architecture for an email message store. I hope to describe this idea on paper in more detail when I have the time.
Posted by Doug Sauder at April 30, 2002 12:22 AM