On Feb 17, 2010, at 12:36 AM, Tatu Saloranta wrote:
>
> Apologies for beating what may sound like dead horse, but given how
> controversial use of seemingly simple terms is, it's necessary to
> look beyond acronyms. What are we trying to do here?
>
Goal 1: to design and implement APIs for the client and server side
that make it easier, than it currently is in Jersey, for a developer
to apply the hypertext constraint to their RESTful application.
It is the responsibility of the developer to understand the hypertext
constraint and what properties it induces in their application
architecture.
Goal 2: it is the responsibility of the Jersey team (community?
although i do not think i can speak for the community, only for the
team) to help guide developers with support, examples and documentation.
Goal 3: any work we do in Jersey will be input to any future JAX-RS
2.0 effort.
To achieve these goals we need to look at existing examples and
develop prototypes to evaluate what is the best way to make progress.
We don't want to limit the API to one particular "pattern" of
hypertext constraint applicable to applications. We want to gather a
number of patterns based on the examples and use-cases.
Does the above help clarify matters?
Note that i am not interested in abstract philosophical discussions,
nor interested in reverse engineering Roy's thesis, on what is the
hypertext constraint [*]. I personally find such discussions very
distracting, time-consuming, and are better suited for the rest-
discuss email list (which i lurk on but do not participate in because
i do not have the time).
Paul.
[*] I think a number of us on this list have a very good understanding
on what the hypertext constraint is and what it aims to achieve.