3 ms·

Ok, I guess I misunderstood you then. Maybe your comment was more in the spirit of "APIs should be less secretive about the shape of data they are maintaining i

• mpweiher 8y ago
  Oh, it goes further than that. :-) The assumption that data is something to be maintained internally, at best hidden behind an interface (a procedural one) and at worst "exposed" is so ingrained that it's hard to think of it any other way. However, why can't we have "data" as the interface? The WWW and REST show that we can, and that it works quite swimmingly. With a REST interface you expose a "data" interface (resources that you can GET, PUT, DELETE, POST), but these resources may be implemented procedurally internally, the client has no way of knowing.
  • discreteevent 8y ago
    The interface is the data. Have a look at Data Distribution Service or Eve programming (you may have seen them before). They go further than rest in that you can react to changes in the data model (rest is only half a protocol)
    • mpweiher 8y ago
      Yeah, I am aware of Eve. I've also done my bit, with In-Process REST[1] and Polymorphic Identifiers[2] for the "REST" half, and Constraint Connectors[3] for the "reacting" half. [1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-9299-3_11 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-9299-3_... [2] https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/publications/media/WeiherHirschfeld_2013_PolymorphicIdentifiersUniformResourceAccessInObjectiveSmalltalk_AcmDL.pdf https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/publications/media... [3] https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/publications/media/WeiherHirschfeld_2016_ConstraintsAsPolymorphicConnectors_AuthorsVersion.pdf https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/publications/media...