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Right tool for the job

February 5th, 2008

I feel the need to repost my latest posting from The Server Side here…

James Watson writes:

Personally I would like to see a good open source framework for REST based web services. I’m not sure if it’s the way to go but WSDL 2.0 spec should theoretically support REST. I’m unaware of any tools that help with creating these types of WSDLs.

Don’t use WSDL 2.0 for REST. It’s an ugly way of doing RESTful services IMNSHO. There are plenty of great toolkits out there for helping you build RESTful web services. The ones I have my eye on are:

Please keep in mind that REST and SOAP programming models don’t mix well. There is this complete fallacy going around (I succumbed to it too at one point) that you can use the same service class or description to build a RESTful and a SOAP based service. However, the interactions and mappings should end up being completely different from one to the other! One is message based and one is resource based. You’re going to have to design your service differently as they’re two completely different beasts.

Use the best tool for the job. You’ll save yourself time and a lot of hassle.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under AtomPub, REST, Web Services.

6 Responses to “Right tool for the job”

  1. Vivek Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 2:59 am

    Jersey, JSR-311 is JAX-RS RI not JAX-WS RI.

  2. Dan Diephouse Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Thanks. I’ve spent too many years typing “JAX-WS”… :-)

  3. duryodhan Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    But there really isn’t anything like WSDL for REST , is there ? The fight is still out there whether you need it or not .. where do you stand on that , Dan ? :)

  4. Geoffrey Wiseman Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    I’ve responded in detail here:
    http://furiouspurpose.blogspot.com/2008/02/rest-and-soap-and-right-tool-for-job.html

    Basically agree that REST/SOAP /should/ be built on a different service model, although I’d argue that they CAN be placed on the same service model, it’s just usually not a good idea.

    Restlet’s pretty good, Jersey, I’m watching with interest, and Enunciate isn’t bad, but definitely needs more time. I haven’t tried Abdera.

  5. netzooid » Blog Archive » Why a RESTful IDL is an oxymoron and what we really need instead Says:
    February 7th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

    [...] « Right tool for the job [...]

  6. Siva Prasanna Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 10:38 am

    >>Please keep in mind that REST and SOAP programming models don’t mix well.

    Yes I think I need to accept this to some extent, because I tried it recently and sending back HTTP response messages as Response for soap Operations also.

    Link: http://soa2world.blogspot.com/2008/05/rest-and-ws-service-same-service-using.html

    I personally felt it wasn’t a ideal way but is it completely wrong ? At least for a very simple system like the one I demonstrated (a single resource Employee) I though it was good enough.

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