A Theology of REST?

April 10, 2006 § Leave a comment

Over on REST discuss, transplanted Ghanese IBMer Koranteng
Ofosu-Amaah posted a fascinating economic analysis of REST. [Read more] for some
choice excerpts from his Biblically-inspired parable(emphasis mine); I should
ask him if he knows economist-theologian Sayo
Ajiboye!

? There’s a
Reverend:
HTTP

? There’s a
choir:
the HUHXtable quartet (HTTP, URI, HTML, XML)

? There are
Four
Horsemen: GET, POST, PUT,
DELETE

? There are
prophets:
(you know who you are)

? There are
pillars:
Resource Modeling, Idempotency etc

? There are
priests
and tax
collectors: the caching and other
intermediaries. Ergo “Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s” recast as the
notion of “giving visibility to intermediaries”.

? There are
angels
and
demons:
a band of Apaches and various HTTP libraries which are alternately sources of
delight and exasperation

? There’s a
Messiah:
the browser (which comes with various pretenders: Firefoxes, Great Explorers,
Viking Operas and Fruity Safaris)

? There are
red
herrings: url opacity
etc

? There are
false
gods: WS-*, crusty old
architectures of appropriation etc.

? There’s the
wilderness
and prodigal
children: WebDAV?

? There’s
Mary
Magdalene and the
disciples:
HTML and Forms

? There’s
immaculate
conception: the virtuous
XML

? There are worldly
travellers: the three
mobile
kings JavaScript, Java Applet and
ActiveX (some discredited)

? There are scrappy
offspring:
Atom, RSS and Atompub

? There are gruesome
Philistines:
implementation details such as Structured Data, Character Encoding,
Security

? There are elevator pitches,
Cliff’s notes and
ballads:
Sir Tim’s lullaby of Web Architecture
101 is quite
reasonable

? There’s
myrrh
and
frankincense:
the web as conversation engine

? And now there’s the
Promised
Land �:
Reed’s
Law as the proverbial milk
and honey

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