REST (for me) should simply be XML that you POST/GET/DELETE/PUT to/from a specific location - that specific location (i.e. the URI) is a specific resource.
Hence it should be http://example.com/cd/radiohead/okcomputer to read (GET) or write (PUT) that particular album entry... So basically you constrain the "nouns" to GET/PUT/POST/DELETE and make each URI a "verb" (CD, order, customer, Amazon product, whatever).
If you start breaking away from that, you quickly get back to the Web Services world, which is much more orientated around a transactional view than REST. (Web Services are better for these kinds of interactions imho).
So a funds transfer, or some kind of transactional processing probably isn't the best use of REST. The problem arises when people try to shoe-horn these kinds of things in regardless. It's quite difficult to do neatly with the nouns available.
Not that you can't break any of these rules and do it anyway... People do all the time. Hence (I think) why this author is so annoyed.
Either way, in my view, if you're going to use REST you might as well get the power of it's simplicity and avoid this type of shoehorning entirely. I'm a big advocate of using both REST and Web Services - use the appropriate technology for the given case.
REST (for me) should simply be XML that you POST/GET/DELETE/PUT to/from a specific location - that specific location (i.e. the URI) is a specific resource.
Hence it should be http://example.com/cd/radiohead/okcomputer to read (GET) or write (PUT) that particular album entry... So basically you constrain the "nouns" to GET/PUT/POST/DELETE and make each URI a "verb" (CD, order, customer, Amazon product, whatever).
If you start breaking away from that, you quickly get back to the Web Services world, which is much more orientated around a transactional view than REST. (Web Services are better for these kinds of interactions imho).
So a funds transfer, or some kind of transactional processing probably isn't the best use of REST. The problem arises when people try to shoe-horn these kinds of things in regardless. It's quite difficult to do neatly with the nouns available.
Not that you can't break any of these rules and do it anyway... People do all the time. Hence (I think) why this author is so annoyed.
Either way, in my view, if you're going to use REST you might as well get the power of it's simplicity and avoid this type of shoehorning entirely. I'm a big advocate of using both REST and Web Services - use the appropriate technology for the given case.