software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

, a resource-oriented architecture (ROA) is a style of

software architecture Software architecture is the set of structures needed to reason about a software system and the discipline of creating such structures and systems. Each structure comprises software elements, relations among them, and properties of both elements a ...

and

programming paradigm A programming paradigm is a relatively high-level way to conceptualize and structure the implementation of a computer program. A programming language can be classified as supporting one or more paradigms. Paradigms are separated along and descri ...

for supportive designing and developing

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

in the form of Internetworking of

resources ''Resource'' refers to all the materials available in our environment which are Technology, technologically accessible, Economics, economically feasible and Culture, culturally Sustainability, sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and want ...

with "

REST 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 ...

ful"

interface Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Inter ...

s. These resources are

software component A software component is a modular unit of software that encapsulates specific functionality. The desired characteristics of a component are reusability and maintainability. Value Components allow software development to assemble software ...

s (discrete pieces of code and/or

data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization and storage format that is usually chosen for Efficiency, efficient Data access, access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships amo ...

s) which can be reused for different purposes. ROA

design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

principles and guidelines are used during the phases of

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

and

system integration System integration is defined in engineering as the process of bringing together the component sub-systems into one system (an aggregation of subsystems cooperating so that the system is able to deliver the overarching functionality) and ensuring ...

. REST, or Representational State Transfer, describes a series of architectural constraints that exemplify how the web's design emerged. Various concrete implementations of these ideas have been created throughout time, but it has been difficult to discuss the REST architectural style without blurring the lines between actual software and the architectural principles behind it. In Chapter 5 of his thesis,

Roy Fielding Roy Thomas Fielding (born 1965) is an American computer scientist, one of the principal authors of the HTTP specification and the originator of the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style. He is an authority on computer network ...

documents how the World Wide Web is designed to be constrained by the REST series of limitations. These are still fairly abstract and have been interpreted in various ways in designing new frameworks, systems, and websites. In the past, heated exchanges have been made about whether

RPC RPC may refer to: Science and technology * Rational polynomial coefficient * Reactive Plastic Curtain, a carbon-dioxide-absorbing device used in some rebreather breathing sets * Regional Playback Control, a regional lockout technology for DVDs ...

-style REST architectures are RESTful.Chapter 5 of Fielding's dissertation i
"Representational State Transfer (REST)"

Guidelines for clarification

The Resource Oriented Architecture, as documented by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby in their 2007 book ''RESTful Web Services'', gives concrete advice on specific technical details. Naming these collections of guidelines "Resource Oriented Architecture" may allow developers to discuss the benefits of an architecture in the context of ROA. Some guidelines are already common within the larger REST communities such as: that an application should expose many URIs, one for each resource; and that processing cookies representing IDs in a server-side session is not RESTful.

Existing frameworks

Richardson and Ruby also discuss many software frameworks that provide some or many features of the ROA. These include /db, Django,

TurboGears TurboGears is a Python web application framework consisting of several WSGI components such as WebOb, SQLAlchemyKajikitemplate language and Repoze. TurboGears is designed around the model–view–controller (MVC) architecture, much like ...

Flask Flask may refer to: Container * Hip flask, a small container used to carry liquid * Laboratory flask, laboratory glassware for holding larger volumes than simple test tubes ** Erlenmeyer flask, a common laboratory flask with a flat bottom, a c ...

, EverRest, JBoss RESTEasy, JBoss Seam, Spring, Apache Wink,

Jersey Jersey ( ; ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an autonomous and self-governing island territory of the British Islands. Although as a British Crown Dependency it is not a sovereign state, it has its own distinguishing civil and gov ...

NetKernel NetKernel is a British software company and software platform by the same name that is used for High Performance Computing, Enterprise Application Integration, and Energy Efficient Computation. It allows developers to cleanly separate code from ar ...

, Recess,

Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pa ...

Symfony Symfony is a free and open-source PHP web application framework and a set of reusable PHP component libraries. It was published as free software on October 18, 2005, and released under the MIT License. Goal Symfony aims to speed up the crea ...

, Yii2,

Play Framework Play Framework is an open-source web application framework which follows the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern. It is written in Scala and usable from other programming languages that are compiled to JVM bytecode, e.g. Java. ...

, and

API Platform An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build suc ...

Web infrastructure

While REST is a set of architectural guidelines applicable to various types of computing infrastructures, Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA) is only coupled with the web. This architecture is therefore useful mostly to businesses that consider the web as the computing/publishing platform of choice. The power of the web seems to mostly reside in its ability to lower the barriers to entry for human users who may not be highly trained in using computing machinery. As such, the web widens the market reach for any business that decides to publish some of its content in electronic format. On the web, such published content is regarded as a web resource.

References

Bibliography

* * {{Web interfaces Software architecture