ESB and Rest

Hi-

So anyone have any thoughts around REST ?

One of my clients is pushing this into their enterprise. After reading up on the subject I am thinking: Sure this is a good way to expose data in new applications and yes we could
probably expose old applications as REST services via the bus.

From an integration centric point isn’t this just a simplified way to hook up to end systems?

In some ways REST is “simplified” as compared to other techniques.

In other ways, it is more complex.

I’m not entirely certain RESTful interfaces can be properly supported using Integration Server. Each resource is to be identified by a URL. As data comes and goes from the component behind the interface, the URLs will dynamically vary. I haven’t dug into trying to support this but I’m not certain IS will readily support such a scheme. IS is service based (not in an SOA sense), not resource based.

Making calls to RESTful interfaces shouldn’t be a problem. I only suspect that hosting RESTful interfaces will be a challenge.