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Book:   RESTful Web Services
Subject:   worst O'Reilly book ever seen
Date:   2008-05-22 08:15:14
From:   Anonymous Reader
Rating:  StarStarStarStarStar

I tried to read this book but my experience was frustrating. Very often I feel annoyed by the author's blahing. No doubt there are shining points in this book, but they are buried in overwhelming nonsenses. This book doesn't worth reading, it's wast e of time. Just find some short articles, and enjoy the true technology.
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  • One of the most pertinent books for WOA,  September 30 2008
    Rating: StarStarStarStarStar
    Submitted by Arun Batchu   [Respond | View]

    At the time of writing, this is one of the best books that makes Roy Fielding's ReST philosophy more accessible to the pragmatists - the builders on the ground.
    As a Systems' architect who has to deliver business applications on a daily basis, I struggled to make sense of what exactly is ReSTful-ness...like any nascent, emergent, powerful and useful thing, ReST meant a lot of things to a lot of people. The literature on the web touched upon different manifestations but lacked the power to communicate a holistic view.
    Thank goodness I landed on this EXCELLENT book that described the vision and took me through a journey of the ReSTfulness spectrum - not all supposedly ReSTful services are ReSTful. I understood the power of the human Web and now I realized how the same architecture and design will work for the data/document web; The comparing and constrasting of the ReSTfulness of flickr, del.icio.us, amazon's s3 API's was illuminating. The explanation of HTTP - how it works and how it is supposed to work and how the power could be leveraged opened up new windows and doors.
    Fielding's work made more sense now. The foundational principles were getting clearer and clearer.
    It became ( and still is) a reference book. Its a book I carry everywhere. I "steal" time to re-read some of what is being said whenever I get time.
    Yes, there are a few things that could be improved. But who cares? When you find water in a desert, do you stop to whine about a few sand particles? This book's strengths outnumber the weaknesses many times over.
    Because of this book, I feel that I can inspire my team to build a scale-free application that unifies the enterprise just like the larger web did. At last I have found the unifying vision that will save me from re-inventing plumbing. I can now move on to focus on the business architecture. No more plumbing - the customer is waiting!
    To the other ignorant reviewers who did/do not get this seminal work, please delay publishing your ignorance for a few more years...and save yourself the ignominy of having commented on something you have little understanding of.