Don’t REST unless you need to

Peter Saint-André (of XMPP fame) posted his thoughts on REST today.

It seems downright silly to say that it’s a good thing to limit the use of other protocols to HTTP-like semantics, given that push semantics have launched not one but two killer apps – email and IM.

That would be downright silly. I don’t think anybody has said that REST is the ultimate architectural style that everything should emulate. REST handles a specific set of problems, one which doesn’t have much overlap with the set of problems encountered generic messaging.

The fuss that’s been kicked up about REST vs. RPC recently is about using HTTP as it was designed, not about devouring all alternatives. XMPP is good at many things that HTTP is not, and that’s a good thing. If it were interchangeable with HTTP, there wouldn’t be much point.

So I don’t know that the Jabberites will ever be good RESTafarians.

Good. HTTP is fine for REST, for now. XMPP’s got a nice niche for itself, and I don’t think that grooming it as a replacement for HTTP would do anyone any good.

I’ll thank you not to characterize it as a religion though; that’s how flame wars get started, and those are never productive.