"Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for creating, maintaining, retrieving, and deleting resources. REST's information-driven, resource-oriented approach to building Web services can both satisfy your software's users and make your life as a developer easier. This article, the first in a four-part series by REST expert Brian Sletten, introduces the concepts that underlie REST, explains the mechanisms that RESTful applications use, and explores the benefits of REST."
"The open source Restlet API reduces the workload involved in building and consuming RESTful APIs in Java. In this second article in the REST for Java developers series, Brian Sletten introduces you to Restlet and walks through an example application in deploying its interfaces into the servlet containers you use today, while also preparing for the systems of the future. Brian also briefly introduces JSR 311: JAX-RS, Sun's effort to integrate RESTful APIs with the Java EE stack. Level: Intermediate."
"Brian Sletten is a regular speaker on the No Fluff Just Stuff tour and an established expert on REST and RESTful Web application development. In this talk with Andy Glover, Brian demystifies REST as an application protocol, not a transport protocol, and describes the series of interactions that define REST. As he explains, REST is best used for managing information and information spaces without revealing back-end implementation. What it is not about, he says, is hijacking the GET verb and abusing it badly."
"Find out what makes the JavaBeans Activation Framework a perfect vehicle for RESTful data transmission, then put JAF to work in a sample Web application that tracks requests and responses through a Java Servlet-based system."
"It's tremendously difficult to argue a RESTful approach to a service-oriented architecture (SOA), when the corporate mindshare is SOAP--where project stakeholders tout the SOA buzzword, nod their heads sagely when you say SOAP, nod their heads again when you say XML-RPC, and then look blankly when you mention REST. At an official level, it seems that for the IBMs, Suns, Microsofts, and Oracles (et al) of this world, REST isn't even on the radar; perhaps more because they would find it difficult to build a commercial strategy around something that is based on simplicity and standards (like HTTP) that have been around for years, than from a true lack of visibility at the coalface. So when the push from on high is for SOAP web services and associated technologies, and your business partners and colleagues have been drinking the Sun/MS/IBM/etc. Kool-Aid, you're generally fighting a losing battle if you're promoting alternatives."
"Amazon Simple Store Service (S3) is a service from Amazon that allows you to store files into reliable remote storage for a very competitive price; it is becoming very popular. S3 is used by companies to store photos and videos of their customers, back up their own data, and more. S3 provides both SOAP and REST APIs; this article focuses on using the S3 REST API with the Java programming language."
"The latest massive distributed framework is Web services. Web services technology lets applications communicate with one another in a platform- and programming language-independent manner (see Resources). Web services standards too are threatened by the complexity bogeyman, but an alternative strategy known as REST promises a more straightforward approach. This article shows you how to add a REST-style Web service in Ruby on Rails and invoke the service from both Ruby and Java code."
"The service producer and service consumer have a mutual understanding of the context and content being passed along. Because there is no formal way to describe the web services interface, both parties must agree out of band on the schemas that describe the data being exchanged and on ways to process it meaningfully. In the real world, most commercial applications that expose services as RESTful implementations also distribute so-called value-added toolkits that describe the interfaces to developers in popular programming languages."
"Although JavaFX Script uses syntax that somewhat resembles Java and JavaScript, it is important to understand how JavaFX differs from Java. One area in particular where this understanding would be helpful for Java developers who are just beginning to explore JavaFX is RESTful web services invocation. This 10-Minute Solution demonstrates how to invoke RESTful web services from JavaFX, and how to process the results."
"You can implement SOA just as well by sending simple messages over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Basically, this is what RESTful Web services do. Representational State Transfer (REST; the name was coined by Roy Fielding) isn't a protocol or technology: It's an architectural style. REST, a lightweight alternative to SOAP, is resource oriented rather than action oriented. It's often summarized as bringing back remote procedure calls to GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE statements using HTTP. In my opinion, this is the second important step."
