REST, Steve Vinoski

Steve Vinoski of Iona on REST in the context of Web Services Interactions. [PDF].
Best bits:

"Some vendors are attempting to push existing middleware system models, such as CORBA and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), directly into Web services, but as I described last issue, this approach is fraught with problems. One of the worst is that it causes inappropriate details (about protocols, type systems, interaction models, and so on) to show through the Web Services level from the underlying systems, destroying the service encapsulation and isolation that Web services are supposed to provide."

"Because I am a longtime RPC advocate, associates are often surprised when I promote Rest. From what I’ve learned about it to date, I know that it neatly solves some of the complexity and scaling issues faced by RPCbased distributed systems. I suggest those with backgrounds similar to mine take the time to seriously study Rest and learn how it works. The fact that the Web — the largest and most successful distributed system in existence is built on Rest principles should be enough to convince even the most stalwart advocates of other interaction models that Rest holds significant promise for putting the “Web” back into Web services, and aligning their interaction models with existing Web architecture."

XML namespaces and training wheels

Jon Udell on XML namespaces.

Buddah-Nature

What is the ontological status of Buddah-nature apart from its soteriological orientation and salvific import?
I am a sucker for sentences that include the word "ontological". Such a richly overloaded word!
I had to lie down when I first read the question. Doesn't it *sound* great on the ear? Its quite a simple question (in the sense of understanding the question - not the answer!). I had to hit the dictionary for "soteriological" though.

Congrats to Boa Constructor

Sourceforge product of the month. Richly deserved. Boa has a ridiculously low version number for such a powerful and functional piece of software.

Documents = state

Brilliant summation by Mark Baker of the essence of the difference between the REST approach and the Procedure Call approach to system design:

A document is state (the S in REST). Look in any file folder, document storage system, archived tape, or heck, any file system, and you will find chunks of state. What you won't see in any of these are "methods". If you encapsulate the state within a "method" wrapper, then what you have is no longer a document, because it carries with it intent; state does not.

Amen.

Programming Paradoxes

I like this list on Patrick Logan's blog. My favourite:-

"A language designed to give programmers what they want may initially succeed but create pernicious problems as it catches on. However, a language designed to give programmers what they really need may never catch fire at all."

Why do Visual Basic and Lisp (in that order) spring to mind :-)

Interesting identity and jurisdiction issues?

OK, so I'm stretching it a bit but doesn't the upcoming wedding of a Spaceman raise a number of interesting issues to do with identity and jurisdiction?

How do the powers that be know that the voice is really the person given that he is not co-located with his SO? Is "orbit" a place covered by the 'power invested in my by xxx" etc.

XML Namespaces, Java classpath, UTF16 surrogate pairs, 6502 machine code

XML namespaces (blech) remind me of the Java classpath problem. On one hand, the problem being solved seems simple and the solution elegant but the implementation and practice tells a totally different story.
UTF16 surogate pairs remind me of 6502 machine code. There was a magic area - the first 1024 bytes of RAM. If you wished to access anything beyond (I think) the first 1k in the 64k you could address, you had to put your address data somewhere in the first 1k and then jump through it.

Life is too short, and expertise too expensive, to optimise application components as if disk space were expensive

The economics of application installation. An ITWorld article.

Interesting debugging tool for Java/Jython

jinsitu.

Google does synonyms

Google does synonyms. Add a wiggle like this. [via fieldmethods].

Google-farts

There must be a name for Google searches that don't produce a single relevant hit surely :-) Looking for a high res image of Elmo (Sesame St.) for one of my kids. I did this search and got 4 very odd hits. This one produces a bigger set of hits that sheds light on matters but still no cutesy little red guy.
Yes, it is a Bank Holiday in Ireland.