[Query on ROA] Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby

[Dinesh Sundrani]

Hi Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby,

The book 'RESTful Web Services' explains the ROA [Resource-Oriented Architecture], Could you throw some light on how it is different than the SOA [Service-Oriented Architecture] when it comes to designing Web Services??

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Regards,
Dinesh Sundrani
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SCJP 1.5 [86%]
SCWCD [95%]
SCDJWS [98%]
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[Dinesh Sundrani]

Sorry Folks, Don't know how my query got posted twice?? Javaranch server probably seems to be too busy today?

Regards,
Dinesh S

[Sam Ruby]

In the book, we try to use the term "ROA" for Resource Oriented Architecture, which is a subset or profile of REST.

One thing that ROA and SOA have in common, and in start contrast to things like WSDL and CORBA, is that instead of trying to abstract away the network, they recognize that machine boundaries are important architectural facets, e.g., places where trust boundaries often exist.

Where they differ is that SOA focuses on services (verbs), and ROA focuses on resources (noun). A concrete example to illustrate the subtle difference: Google is SOA and ROA. Google is a service (search). You send that service a request, and you get a reply. The same endpoint is also a resource. If you do a GET on Google's home page, you get an concrete representation of a form (in this case, in HTML). That form tells you how to construct requests to other resources (i.e., pages containing search results). Since those pages are resources, they can be bookmarked, linked to from JavaRanch, send over IM to your friends, etc.

[Dinesh Sundrani]

Thanks Sam, This confirms my understanding that ROA is a architecture involving interactions with the variuos resources deployed and identified by Uniform Resource Locators.

Thanks,
Dinesh Sundrani

[Leonard Richardson]

I'd like to add that there can be resource-oriented architectures
other than the specific one we describe in chapter 4 of RWS. In the
future there might be a number of competing RESTful architectures, the
way today you see competing development methodologies. Calling our
architecture "_The_ Resource-Oriented Architecture" is a little
egotistic but at least we didn't name it after ourselves.

[Dinesh Sundrani]

Hi Leonard, Thanks for making it crystal clear.

Just out of curiousity, Are there any Application Servers or Web Servers in market to support ROA (like how BEA has BEA Aqualogic for SOA) likewise??

Anyone?

*********************
Regards,
Dinesh Sundrani
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SCJP 1.5 [86%]
SCWCD [95%]
SCDJWS [98%]
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[Leonard Richardson]

ROA is a term we basically made up for the book. But Restlet works well with the ROA procedure: it lets you define Resource classes and connect them to URI Templates so they'll be triggered by incoming HTTP requests. There's a representative Restlet example in chapter 12.

[Frank Carver]

Originally posted by Leonard Richardson:
Calling our
architecture "_The_ Resource-Oriented Architecture" is a little
egotistic but at least we didn't name it after ourselves.

Naturally that "R" which has caused such puzzlement in this thread can't possibly also stand for Richardson, or Ruby, or both