This talk will summarize the REST web services development technique and

compare and contrast two such services: the ATOM Syndication and

Weblog API and the Amazon REST interface. The talk should help

clarify the main concepts of REST Web services.

REST stands for Representational State Transfer. It is an architectural

style for networked applications. REST web services are recognizable

through their focus on assigning Web addresses to resources, using

generic, reusable HTTP interfaces for those resources and stateleness

of connections. Many argue that REST is very compatible with traditional

XML development techniques. In particular, REST web services tend to

expose many resources as XML documents accessible through HTTP's GET

method. These resources can be incorporated into XML applications through

XML entity inclusion, XInclude, XPointer and the XPath document

function.

The ATOM Syndication API defines a variety of XML-described resources

and HTTP-based interfaces for manipulating them. This interface

demonstrates the natural relationship between REST interfaces, XML

and the Web. ATOM is extensible through the natural extensibility

of XML and HTTP.

The Amazon API is a little bit more more one-dimensional but no

less powerful. It is essentially a sophisticated query interface to a very valuable database.

In fact, it is so powerful it raises some interesting scalability and

security issues.