On Oct 25, 2006, at 5:15 PM, Dave Orchard wrote:
> You seem to have your own internal definition of REST that doesn't
> map to
> one that I'm familiar with. We've established that you think that
> Roy and
> the TAG aren't any kind of authorities wrt REST - because if you
> did you'd
> know that Roy would have a "Roy stern comment"(tm) on any W3C TAG
> finding
> that contradicted his view of REST and he's also contributed to that
> finding.

Er, not since it was completely rewritten -- I haven't even reviewed it.
The first sentence, for example, is problematic.

> FWIW, one of the underlying philosophical aspects of REST is that
> resources and their representations change, and that includes REST
> itself.

No, it is that representations can change if that is how the resource
is defined. A resource does not change -- what changes are the
perceptions of the users of a resource (hence, "do not try to bend
the spoon, for that would be impossible ..."). That is where I and
the semantic web part ways, since someone decided that the semantic
web would assume a world that does not change its own perceptions.

My dissertation will not change. Whether or not the style changes is
debatable -- other people's perceptions are guaranteed to change
(I've already seen multiple papers claiming to "add" features to REST
that were already in the style to begin with, as well as plenty of
arguments about "REST fundamentals" that are not even close
to what I wrote). Personally, I've got better things to do.

I think that this thread is seriously missing the point of my
dissertation. All of the REST constraints exist for a reason.
The first thing you should do is determine what that reason is,
and then see if it still applies to the system being designed.
Use the old noggin -- that is the point.

FYI, the reason, in this case, is independent evolution of components.
And hypermedia is a defined term (that does not mean just HTML).

....Roy [and, yes, I am not answering the question, on purpose]