Topic: REST

A widely shared feeling among many OGC members is that the OGC should develop a common position on the use of RESTful design elements in its standards. Several efforts have been started but a common position has not yet emerged. There is nonetheless a wide need for OGC members to better understand the use of HTTP for web services, issues such as the correct design of web services to ensure optimal caching of persistent resources.

Several OGC web services now have new interfaces that integrate ideas from REST for certain exchanges. The membership is divided over the relation of that work to the RESTful design principles.

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Discussion

first, this should teach a lesson to the RESTful SWG: it was a good move to establish it, but if you don't come to conclusions for a couple of years, reality will bypass you. Second, a concertation effort on RESTful testing, using the OWS vehicle or similar, sounds like a great idea. Third, in the WCS REST spec draft we have tried to marry REST with KVP, leading to interesting new ways wrt. security mechanisms: https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=51832 .

-- PeterBaumann - 30 Jun 2013

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We are stuck in low-level issues. The world, in particular with the advent of Big Data, has moved on. APIs are dead, what we need next is high-level query languages, based on the eminently successful example of SQL. Such query languages (we have good first steps, BTW: FE, WCPS) allow (i) good machine-machine communication as there is a clear syntax and (transcending WPS) semantics; (ii) wrapping this into visual interfaces for human users; (iii) allow versatile server-side optimization and parallelization. Let's leave REST, JSON, etc to the code monkeys and think about users now.

-- PeterBaumann - 30 Jun 2013

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On behalf of Paula McLeod:

To support standards development, the OGC needs to demonstrate the capability to advance key issues, specifically REST.

-- TrevorTaylor - 15 Aug 2013