Presentation: Ian Robinson on REST, Atom and AtomPub

by Stefan Tilkov on May 04, 2009 | NOTICE: The next QCon is in New York Jun 10-14, Join us!

In a presentation recorded at QCon San Francisco, ThoughtWorks' Ian Robinson explains how Atom and AtomPub can be used as part of a RESTful HTTP approach in enterprise projects.

Ian starts by outlining different implementation options for distributing events in an enterprise scenario: Point-to-point, bus, or even polling. He explains how the last of these options can be supported using HTTP and the Atom syndication format, where the format originally designed to notify readers of news sources such as weblogs can be generalized to arbitrary event streams.

Next, Ian explains how HTTP's features, particularly its support for caching and cache validation, can turn polling into a usable alternative. He shows how an archive of events can be navigated using links, and outlines the problems with the 'application/xml' media type.

After explaining how conflicts can be handled, he offers some guidance regarding the applicability of feeds. Finally, Robertson spends some time on advanced caching concepts.

Ian Robertson's presentation goes beyond a simple REST introduction and offers highlights some advanced solutions available to architects applying the REST style.

Watch the full presentation (59 minutes).

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Community comments

No subscriber list for the "polling" solution is not completely accurate. by Bediako George Posted

Re: No subscriber list for the by Dominique JOCAL Posted

No subscriber list for the "polling" solution is not completely accurate. by Bediako George

Although a subscriber list is not explicitly maintained for the poll solution, enterprise security considerations will force you to create a list of allowed consumers. Of course, authentication and authorization of those consumers must also occur. The end result, for all intents and purposes, is a subscriber list.

This does not in any way take away from the greater point the presenter makes which is that the "consumer poll" approach is fundamentally different from the "enterprise service bus" approach, and in many cases represents a simple, efficient, and cost effective alternative.

At Lucid, we have created an open source processing framework call Hannibal that promotes many of the values addressed in this presentation. If you are interested feel free to download it here:

code.google.com/p/hannibalcodegenerator/

Bediako George
lucidtechnics.com

Re: No subscriber list for the by Dominique JOCAL

even without security issues, the end result is always a list; the interesting point is to find a way to delegate it.
Maybe you can also delegate security stuff also to other components:
- putting applications in a secured area, so they can trust each other through anonymous calls;
- or connecting applications to a common security system managing application identities and roles, and simply requiring a given role at the publisher level.