subbu.org

Sergey Beryozkin is wondering about

is it what actually defines Web Services ? Not only the actual technology per se but the fact that multiple businesses can do the same technology and successfully interoperate?

Will it ever happen with RESTful services ? Will it be possible for multiple companies to interoperate with more sophisticated things involved such as transactions, for ex, something which is possible to do with WS-BusinessActivity which does not really lock all involved ?

…

Or is it something which will not be ever needed in practice ?

The fact that I am using a client (i.e. the browser) that uses the hypermedia provided by my blog server to create/update representations of resources identified by URIs via a uniform interface (HTTP) demonstrates the interoperability of applications built upon the REST architectural style.

The question about transactions and REST often stems from the misconception of equating POX over HTTP to REST. Unfortunately, POX over HTTP is not the same as REST. What gets tested for interoperability under WS-* (such as understanding SOAP body/headers, serializing/deserializing different XML constructs, faults etc) is not necessarily the same for REST (implementing the uniform interface, understanding media types and hypermedia etc.)