SOA “RESTful” Web Services for simple integration

There is a term going around which talks about ‘RESTful’ services which our customers often ask about. It gives the impression of something that can provide great ‘peace and tranquillity’ and in a way, it can.

The ‘REST’ in this expression refers to the REpresentational State Transfer “protocol”.  While this may sound like a heavy duty standard that must be studied in depth, nothing can be further from the truth. Essentially this is the URL based protocol that we are using on a day to day basis in our browsers.

The idea is quite simple in that each URL is unique and is stateless so that it can be invoked at any time to get the data represented by that URL. In a heavy duty REST implementation, one URL will deliver data with links to other URLs to allow you to drill down to the data you want.

In the complex world of integration, a REST Web Service is the simplest way to get data from somewhere to somewhere; consider how easily we move data around the internet ?  For example, a REST service could represent the latest set of data from a data source such as a database.

Any software you have today, be it a simple editor or MS Excel or MS Word, can ‘open’ a URL so can in fact issue a REST request to retrieve  this latest data. Consider a service that delivers information on employees and their locations; MS Word could run a mail merge to write to all of these employees. If the REST service delivers stock quotes, MS Excel could use the data to produce pie charts. Java and .Net can all invoke these RESTful services so what easier way to integrate with your existing data and applications.

The ultimate test of this simplicity is that the service can be tested very easily by using a browser to open the URL. While the data coming back will be raw XML, it’s a very simple way to see if the service is working and doing what you expect. Linked with a stylesheet, a simple way to deliver data to a browser is with a RESTful service linked with a stylesheet that makes it presentable.

With such simplicity, why would you want to integrate in any other way ? The SOA Gateway can create RESTful Web Services in seconds from existing database tables or applications.