What is REST (in simple English)

Posted by Gaurav on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Gaurav
Published on 2010-12-05T10:38:00Z Indexed on 2012/10/20 17:13 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 221

Filed under:

web-development

|

architecture

|

web-framework

|

rest

Lately I have become interested in familiarizing myself with REST. I tried reading wiki entry on REST, but it was of no help. I would really appreciate it if someone can explain in simple English (that is without unnecessary tech jargon)

What is REST
What position it occupies in web architecture ecosystem
How tightly (or loosely) it is coupled with protocol.
What are the alternatives to REST and how does REST compare with them.

I understand it may not be possible to answer this in one or two paragraphs, in that case relevant links will be highly appreciated.

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about web-development

Web Development - How to Get Started in Web Development

as seen on Ezine Articles - Search for 'Ezine Articles'
11 years ago I purchased a book about basic HTML development. A purchase that would end up defining my entire professional career. I bought it because I wanted to create a web page for a school project. This was in the days of Geo city sites and it looked absolutely horrible. >>> More
PHP Web Development, Web Development Using PHP As an Open Source

as seen on Ezine Articles - Search for 'Ezine Articles'
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. PHP is the most famous language nowadays as it is an open source and web development requires no costs in implementation. >>> More
How to get full query string parameters not UrlDecoded

as seen on Developer IT - Search for 'Developer IT'
Introduction While developing Developer IT’s website, we came across a problem when the user search keywords containing special character like the plus ‘+’ char. We found it while looking for C++ in our search engine. The request parameter output in ASP.NET was “c “.… >>> More
Tracking download of non-html (like pdf) downloads with jQuery and Google Analytics

as seen on Developer IT - Search for 'Developer IT'
Hi folks, it’s been quite calm at Developer IT’s this summer since we were all involved in other projects, but we are slowly comming back. In this post, we will present a simple way of tracking files download with Google Analytics with the help of jQuery. We work for a client that offers… >>> More
What is the best .NET web development framework?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm looking for a framework to simplify the creation of a website with social networking features and plenty of custom functionality. I'm quite keen to use an ORM like nHibernate or similar for data access. Would DotNetNuke be a good choice? Or are there other options which are better. Added: I'm… >>> More

Related posts about architecture

3-tier architecture v. 3-server architecture

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm building a traditional .NET MVC site, so I've got a natural 3-tier software architecture setup (presentation in the form of Views, business layer in the controller, and data layer in the models and data access layer). When I've deployed such sites, it usually goes either on one server (where… >>> More
"cloud architecture" concepts in a system architecture diagrams

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
If you design a distributed application for easy scale-out, or you just want to make use of any of the new “cloud computing” offerings by Amazon, Google or Microsoft, there are some typical concepts or components you usually end up using: distributed blob storage (aka S3) asynchronous, durable message… >>> More
Is the PowerPC (G4) architecture better than Intel x86 architecture for certain types of application

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have a PowerMac G4 from around the year 2000. It's a serviceable Unix machine but I don't do much with it since I have plenty of Pentium 4 machines around with Linux on them. I was wondering if the PowerPC based machine is capable of handling certain tasks faster or "better" than Intel based machines… >>> More
SAAS architecture and salesforce database architecture

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello all, I am architecting a software project and I want to create a SAAS (Software As a service) one. I want to model my application along the lines of Salesforce. I really like there customization features but I am not sure how they really go about it. I read that they create an ID for every… >>> More
Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph… >>> More