Sun gives Java a REST
October 13, 2008 —
(Page 1 of 2)
The JCP is hoping to give SOAP a REST. Today, Sun Microsystems will release JAR files for the JAX-RS, the new Java API for RESTful Web services. REST (Representational State Transfer) substitutes the traditional SOAP practices in favor of a natively Web-based solution by encoding information directly into URLs and allowing the HTTP protocol to do much of the heavy lifting.
Dr. Marc J. Hadley, a senior staff engineer in the office of the CTO at Sun, was co-spec lead on JSR 311. He's been working with Web services since their inception and was also co-lead on the JAX-WS specification, JSR 224. After years of experience with SOAP, Hadley said he now prefers REST.
"I think it's simpler,” said Hadley. “There's so much in HTTP that is still to be fully exploited. Without going to SOAP, there's so much you can already do that people don't realize. I can see there are cases where you can step up to SOAP. But JAX-RS is of the Web, whereas JAX-WS sort of inherits that SOAP thing where the Web is just a transport. JAX-WS is over the Web, rather of the Web.”
Hadley learned a great deal about the capabilities of HTTP during his time on JAX-RS. “One of the biggest thing is the whole precondition processing,” said Hadley, citing what he learned about HTTP. “It solves lots of problems, like lost updates. There's a lot of depth there that you don't realize when you first start working with HTTP. There's also a whole bunch there for a bunch of standard patterns for the Web, like creating a resource. You don't have to make a new method to do that, it's already baked into the protocol."
JAX-RS is built specifically to make the design process for RESTful Web services simple. And because of REST's new and simplistic design, Hadley said that this was an easier API to write than previous Java Web services APIs.
“We didn't really have a lot of baggage to bring along," said Hadley. "In JAX-WS, we had the JAX-RPC legacy, and for a long time JAX-WS was going to be JAX-RPC 2. That complicated things a lot. In JAX-RS, we didn't really need to do much about content mapping. We didn't have to bake in the things in SOAP where you serialize the messages. A final thing is that there's no real description side to JAX-RS, although we've implemented something. We didn't have to do all the mapping from WSDL."
Related Search Term(s): Java, REST, Sun
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/32959
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Zeichick’s Take: Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets
Streaming radio highlights the need for streaming applications to be designed to take up as little bandwidth as possible
|
|
Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans
|
|
Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers
|
|
ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development
|
Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans
|
|
Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists
|
|
Not so fast when it comes to testing in the cloud
Developers face outsourcing, virtual lab management and mobile devices as obstacles
|
|
Xceed releases UX-focused suite for Microsoft’s WPF
"Blendables" helps match user experiences to developer visions
|
Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
|
|
Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
|
|
RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
|
|
GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
|
The Hidden Costs of Software Licensing
Moving beyond paper-based software licensing to more flexible, software-based licensing is a business decision. There is a growing trend tow...
|
|
Case Study: You May Need a Development Mechanic
As a contractor for a major financial player in Germany, SOBEGE, a German-based consultancy specializing in embedded IT and web services, wa...
|
|
Ensuring Software Quality at a Major International Bank
One of the world’s leading international banks has adopted AgitarOne technology for delivering generated unit tests for their Java software...
|
|
Load Testing Adobe Flex Applications
Adobe Flex applications may be different from applications you’ve worked with before. For classic HTML web applications, the server does all...
|
Related Articles
Letters to the Editor: Sun gives REST, SOAP choice
A reader takes issue with a headline on our story about Sun working with REST along with SOAP, while others weigh in on rewriting Java code in C and solving impedance mismatches.
|
Sun releases Java EE 6
Enterprise Java arrives, along with an updated NetBeans IDE and an enterprise version of the GlassFish application server
|
What a Sun-IBM merger could mean for Java
If IBM were to go through with a rumored acquisition of Sun, SD Times columnist Andrew Binstock speculates on the future of Java in the enterprise and in open source under the auspices of IBM.
|