I am starting to become more aware of the term Representational State Transfer (REST) having learned about XML. This term was coined by Roy Fielding in his Ph. D thesis "Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures". REST is truly an architectural style. It is not a standard. It also does not deal with implementation. The web (with HTTP) is an example of REST.REST deals with resources on the web. These resources are all named with URLs. They are accessible via the HTTP GET command. Thus it is a pull type interaction. Furthermore REST is a stateless transaction. Operations cannot expect to retain state from previous transactions to be able to work. However REST does accommodate the need for a cache to speed up network performance.
For now I plan to keep my eyes open and perhaps try to learn more about REST details. My chief goal right now is to put my new XML knowledge into practice. So I will be gearing to more complex methods for web services like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Look for my previous blog post about SOA
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