In
software engineering
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...
, a resource-oriented architecture (ROA) is a style of
software architecture
Software architecture is the fundamental structure of a software system and the discipline of creating such structures and systems. Each structure comprises software elements, relations among them, and properties of both elements and relations.
...
and
programming paradigm
Programming paradigms are a way to classify programming languages based on their features. Languages can be classified into multiple paradigms.
Some paradigms are concerned mainly with implications for the execution model of the language, suc ...
for supportive designing and developing
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
in the form of Internetworking of
resources
Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified upon their av ...
with "
REST
Rest or REST may refer to:
Relief from activity
* Sleep
** Bed rest
* Kneeling
* Lying (position)
* Sitting
* Squatting position
Structural support
* Structural support
** Rest (cue sports)
** Armrest
** Headrest
** Footrest
Arts and enter ...
ful"
interface
Interface or interfacing may refer to:
Academic journals
* ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society
* '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics''
* '' Int ...
s. These resources are
software component
Component-based software engineering (CBSE), also called component-based development (CBD), is a branch of software engineering that emphasizes the separation of concerns with respect to the wide-ranging functionality available throughout a give ...
s (discrete
pieces of code and/or
data structures) which can be
reused for different purposes. ROA
design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design' ...
principles and guidelines are used during the phases of
software development and
system integration.
REST, or Representational State Transfer, describes a series of architectural constraints that exemplify how the web's design emerged.
Various concrete implementations of these ideas have been created throughout time, but it has been difficult to discuss the REST architectural style without blurring the lines between actual software and the architectural principles behind it.
In Chapter 5 of his thesis,
Roy Fielding
Roy Thomas Fielding (born 1965) is an American computer scientist, one of the principal authors of the HTTP specification and the originator of the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style. He is an authority on computer network ...
documents how the World Wide Web is designed to be constrained by the REST series of limitations. These are still fairly abstract and have been interpreted in various ways in designing new frameworks, systems, and websites. In the past, heated exchanges have been made about whether
RPC-style REST architectures are RESTful.
[Chapter 5 of Fielding's dissertation i]
"Representational State Transfer (REST)"
Guidelines for clarification
The Resource Oriented Architecture, as documented by
Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby in their 2007 book ''RESTful Web Services'', gives concrete advice on specific technical details. Naming these collections of guidelines "Resource Oriented Architecture" may allow developers to discuss the benefits of an architecture in the context of ROA.
Some guidelines are already common within the larger REST communities such as: that an application should expose many URIs, one for each resource; and that processing cookies representing IDs in a server-side session is not RESTful.
Existing frameworks
Richardson and Ruby also discuss many software frameworks that provide some or many features of the ROA. These include
/db,
Django,
TurboGears
TurboGears is a Python web application framework consisting of several WSGI components such as WebOb, SQLAlchemyKajikitemplate language and Repoze.
TurboGears is designed around the model–view–controller (MVC) architecture, much like Stru ...
,
Flask
Flask may refer to:
Container
* Hip flask, a small container used to carry a small amount of liquid
* Laboratory flask, laboratory glassware for holding larger volumes than simple test tubes
** Erlenmeyer flask, a common laboratory flask wit ...
,
EverRest,
JBoss RESTEasy,
JBoss Seam
WildFly, formerly known as JBoss AS, or simply JBoss, is an application server written by JBoss (company), JBoss, now developed by Red Hat. WildFly is written in Java (programming language), Java and implements the Java Platform, Enterprise Editi ...
,
Spring
Spring(s) may refer to:
Common uses
* Spring (season)
Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...
,
Apache Wink,
Jersey
Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label= Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the l ...
,
NetKernel
NetKernel is a British software company and software platform by the same name that is used for High Performance Computing, Enterprise Application Integration, and Energy Efficient Computation.
It allows developers to cleanly separate code from ar ...
,
Recess,
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and we ...
,
Symfony,
Yii2,
Play Framework
Play Framework is an open-source web application framework which follows the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern. It is written in Scala and usable from other programming languages that are compiled to JVM bytecode, e.g. Java. ...
, and
API Platform.
Web infrastructure
While REST is a set of architectural guidelines applicable to various types of computing infrastructures, Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA) is only coupled with the web. This architecture is therefore useful mostly to businesses that consider the web as the computing/publishing platform of choice.
The power of the web seems to mostly reside in its ability to lower the barriers to entry for human users who may not be highly trained in using computing machinery. As such, the web widens the market reach for any business that decides to publish some of its content in electronic format.
On the web, such published content is regarded as a
web resource
A web resource is any identifiable resource (digital, physical, or abstract) present on or connected to the World Wide Web.[< ...](_blank)
.
References
Bibliography
*
*
{{Software engineering
Software architecture