This API will enable developers to rapidly build Web applications in Java that are characteristic of the best designed parts of the Web. This JSR will develop an API for providing REST(Representational State Transfer) support in the Java Platform. Lightweight, RESTful approaches are emerging as a popular alternative to SOAP-based technologies for deployment of services on the internet.
Currently, building RESTful Web services using the Java Platform is significantly more complex than building SOAP-based services and requires using low-level APIs like Servlets or the dynamic JAX-WS APIs. Correct implementation requires a high level of HTTP knowledge on the developer's part.
This JSR will aim to provide a high level easy-to use API for developers to write RESTful web services independent of the underlying technology and will allow these services to run on top of the Java EE or the Java SE platforms. The expert group will investigate whether a subset of the API can be made used with Java ME. The goal of this JSR is to provide an easy to use, declarative style of programming using annotations for developers to write REST ful Web Services and also enable low level access in cases where needed by the application.
RESTful Web Services is a relatively new area in the industry and there are still a lot of unknowns in this space. For example, a key aspect of RESTful Web Services is for the service to be stateless. However, this often requires the developer to produce boiler-plate state restoration code that could be avoided with state-aware API help. We expect the expert group to be an active and engaged group of people participating to prioritize and help drive issues to achieve the end goal of a developer friendly API.
Paul Sandoz is the co-spec lead and implementation lead for JSR 311: Java API for RESTful Web Services. Previous to this Paul has participated in the W3C, ISO and ITU-T standards organizations and contributed to the Glassfish Web services stack on performance related technologies and improvements, namely the standardization, implementation, integration and interoperability of Fast Infoset.
The State of REST vs. SOA— The debate about REST (REpresentational State Transfer) as an alternative to SOAP has been going on for several years now - with more and more respect for the REST point of view in the recent past. While many will agree that a RESTful approach is a better match for Web 2.0-style, public-facing Internet services, it's still often questioned how REST could be applied to 'Enterprise' scenarios. This talk will briefly summarize the REST principles behind the Web's architecture, and then show how an enterprise scenario can benefit from the properties that have made the Web a success.
A little REST and Relaxation— As one of the first modern Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1) architects, co-author of internet standards for HTTP and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI), as well as the founder of various Open Source software projects,amongst others, the Apache HTTP server project, his name is intrinsically tied to the development of the World Wide Web infrastructure. In his keynote address, Roy T. Fielding will pursue the question of how individual Java applets can be replaced by friendlier Web application delivery interfaces.
SOA lite— In this talk you'll see how to apply SOA in a more agile fashion to allow small and mid-sized enterprises to gain the benefits of flexible service components without the governance overhead often associated with SOA.
REST - The Better Web Services Model— The presentation will introduce the principles of REST (REpresentational State Transfer), the Web's architecture, and address how to map advanced enterprise scenarios to an architecture that uses HTTP and the Web instead of abusing it.
