Track: REST - A New Foundation For SOA?

Abstract: REST, the REpresentational State Transfer, is the architectural style underlying the HTTP protocol. In the last couple of years, REST has emerged as a compelling and simpler alternative to SOAP/WSDL/WS-*-based distributed architectures. In this session, Arjen will explain what REST is, how it can be used to build Web Services, and where it makes sense to use. We will look RESTful frameworks such as JSR-311, but focus on creating RESTful Web services with the Spring framework. This will include the features included in the current release of the Spring framework, and new features that are coming in the next major release. Structure: We will start by giving an overview of REST: where did it come from, how does it work, and how can it be used to build a distributed architecture? Using illustrative examples, we will try to find an answer to these questions. Next, we look at some of the current frameworks and tools which can be used to build web services. We will look at Spring-MVC and JSR-311 (also known as JAX-RS) on the server-side, and also investigate client-side options, such as the plain HttpURLConnection, and the more mature Commons HttpClient. Finally, we consider the upcoming features in Spring 3.0, including RESTful improvements to Spring-MVC and the client-side RestTemplate.