In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to set up a basic development environment using nothing more than Tomcat 7, the JDK and a basic text editor. If you want to learn the basics of doing RESTful web services development, this is the right place to start.
Slingshot Yourself into RESTful Web Services
Good post. For keeping things even more simple you can use the embedded Grizzly webserver and dro Tomcat. The HelloWorld sample in Jersey demonsrtates this.
By definition the term webservices was created to denominate the data flow on top of TCP/IP + SOAP. From a couple of years people started talking about RESTful as if it was a webservice. It is not more than a standardization on top of TCP/IP to transport aggregated data that should be translated into an Object for OO Languages...(a plain String)
Can anybody please tell me why we should care so much about restful in terms of security, distributed transactions, EE Applications, etc? Why do people care so much about writting articles about it?
Is this a flame bait? :-) Haven't we had enough of this SOAP/WS-* vs REST debate?
By definition the term webservices was created to denominate the data flow on top of TCP/IP + SOAP. From a couple of years people started talking about RESTful as if it was a webservice. It is not more than a standardization on top of TCP/IP to transport aggregated data that should be translated into an Object for OO Languages...(a plain String)
RESTful web services are not based on TCP/IP, they are HTTP. HTTP is the protocol of the web, hence web service. Yes, the initial term web service was defined in terms of SOAP but that was a long time ago. It used to be the case that the term cocktail only specifically applied to alcoholic drinks made with bitters, sugar, and water.
SOAP is a degenerate spec in that it's almost entirely irrelavant aside from a handful of elements that are required by WSDL based services. Almost no one creates web services that don't follow the doc-literal style. To insist on defining web services in terms of SOAP is therefore pointless at best.
Can anybody please tell me why we should care so much about restful in terms of security, distributed transactions, EE Applications, etc? Why do people care so much about writting articles about it?
If you don't understand why REST is important, you should seek to understand. I doubt anyone will take the time to walk you through it all. You can start here:
The above talks about the fundamental concepts of REST which is roughly a backwards engineering of why the web works.
RESTful Webservices are not the same thing as REST. REST is an architectural approach that can be applied to many things. RESTful web services are a specific approach to web services that utilizes the restful aspects of HTTP. This book is a good resource for getting an understanding of that:
Can anybody please tell me why we should care so much about restful in terms of security, distributed transactions, EE Applications, etc? Why do people care so much about writting articles about it?
The architectural principles of REST are compelling, but we've heard compelling architectural stories before. I think what it boils down to is that SOAP has not done very well as an interoperability protocol. For years, it was a moving target. Even when it settled, all the major SOAP stacks had interoperability problems or lack of support on major languages. It is oodles easier to interoperate with RESTful web services as HTTP support is solid on almost all languages and platforms. Even PHP developers know how to process and code HTTP. Beside the fact you don't need to install a huge stack just to send and receive a request.
Security is somewhat of an issue when you have complex integrated web service interactions, but there's a lot of work going on to solve this problem. Distributed Transactions aren't so much an issue because most competent architects try to remove this requirement in their distributed designs because its the right thing to do. Do/Undo is more prevelent as a distributed TX model, and I don't see why it couldn't be done over a REST interface.
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Bill Burke
Red Hat
Author, Restful Java
weblogic portal REST API - http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13155_01/wlp/docs103/clientdev/rest.html
or any gadget/widget + REST?
