From: Marc Hadley <Marc.Hadley_at_Sun.COM>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:36:14 -0400

On Apr 11, 2007, at 9:55 AM, Jerome Louvel wrote:
>
>>> I am wondering was is the purpose of this change, especially
>>> considering
>>> that "JAX" is reserved for "Java API for XML". I thought we agreed
>>> on the
>>> fact that this API was not XML-centric.
>>>
>> We do, the X is "silent".
>
> But if you go to:
> http://java.sun.com/xml/
>
> You'll see:
> - Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB)
> - Java API for XML Processing (JAXP)
> - Java API for XML Registries (JAXR)
> - Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC)
>
> IMO, this JAX prefix will lead to confusion and assumption from new
> users
> that REST usage necessarily implies XML, which we all agree isn't
> true.
>
FWIW, I agree with you and argued the same.

>> This was another change demanded by ASF, they felt it was import for
>> the API to have a short snappy title that didn't avoided any direct
>> reference to REST so that, in discussion, the two things (the
>> API and the architectural style) would be easy to distinguish. My
>> preference was for JAR-WS but others thought JAX-RS was better even
>> though the X is meaningless.
>
> JAR-WS is a closer match for "Java API for RESTful Web Services"
> but is a
> bit ambiguous with the JAR (Java ARchive) acronym...
>
> Is it too late to commit to something like javax.net.rws?
>
I don't think its too late to change though looking at the current
javax.net I don't think that is a good home either. I quite like the
javax.ws prefix, I'm less happy with the .rs suffix but can live with
it since we can't use .rest.

Marc.

---
Marc Hadley <marc.hadley at sun.com>
CTO Office, Sun Microsystems.