Comments on: Coupling in REST http://www.geekaboo.net/blog/2004/05/10/coupling-in-rest/ Search my thoughts and know me Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:43:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.2 by: Mark Baker http://www.geekaboo.net/blog/2004/05/10/coupling-in-rest/#comment-5 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.geekaboo.net/blog/2004/05/10/coupling-in-rest/#comment-5 Re URI/URL/URN, I just use "URI". Even URLs "identify". And sure, you can have http URIs which are dereferenceable, but why would you do that? Even if you just put an HTML description of what the URI identifies behind it, you've improved its utility enormously. Regarding services which "might stop returning messages in a certain format or just suddenly cease to exist", that's not going away; it's a fundamental part of distributed communication in the face of trust boundaries. So while I can't stop you from retiring a service, the best we can hope for is that you tell me it's retired; for example, with an HTTP service, you'd tell me that by returning a 410 (Gone) response code. Re URI/URL/URN, I just use “URI”. Even URLs “identify”. And sure, you can have http URIs which are dereferenceable, but why would you do that? Even if you just put an HTML description of what the URI identifies behind it, you’ve improved its utility enormously.

Regarding services which “might stop returning messages in a certain format or just suddenly cease to exist”, that’s not going away; it’s a fundamental part of distributed communication in the face of trust boundaries. So while I can’t stop you from retiring a service, the best we can hope for is that you tell me it’s retired; for example, with an HTTP service, you’d tell me that by returning a 410 (Gone) response code.

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