Representational State Transfer (Software architecture)

Library of congress: sh2009000706

• Work cat.: 2009002859: Scriber, K. Effective REST services via .NET, c2009:ECIP galley (REST, architectural concept; archtectural style; used for programming for the Internet to create Web applications and services and being called RESTful services; Representational State Transfer)
• Wikipedia, viewed Jan. 28, 2009(Under: Representational State Transfer; REST, a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web; the terms "representational state transfer" and "REST" were introduced in 2000 in the doctoral dissertation of Roy Fielding)
• ASTI, viewed Jan. 28, 2009(in abstract: Representational state transfer; REST)
• Inspec, viewed Jan. 28, 2009(uncontrolled index heading: Representational state transfer architecural model)
• EI, viewed Jan. 28, 2009(in abstract: "... varations of the World Wide Web's REpresentatioal State Transfer (REST) architectural style that support distributed and decentralized systems")

REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of a distributed, Internet-scale hypermedia system, such as the Web, should behave. The REST architectural style emphasises uniform interfaces, independent deployment of components, the scalability of interactions between them, and creating a layered architecture to promote caching to reduce user-perceived latency, enforce security, and encapsulate legacy systems. REST has been employed throughout the software industry to create stateless, reliable web-based applications. An application that adheres to the REST architectural constraints may be informally described as RESTful, although this term is more commonly associated with the design of HTTP-based APIs and what are widely considered best practices regarding the "verbs" (HTTP methods) a resource responds to, while having little to do with REST as originally formulated—and is often even at odds with the concept.

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