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restlet / web-api-style

Formalization of a Web API architecture style, inspired from REST
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Change Mobility constraint into a requirement #8

Open jlouvel opened 11 years ago

jlouvel commented 11 years ago

Suggested by Robert Brewer

jlouvel commented 11 years ago

For now I renamed it to "Mobile Aware" constraint

mamund commented 11 years ago

what is "Mobile Aware" and why does this matter at all? am i required to now produce output in this style that always works with all things mobile?

jlouvel commented 11 years ago

With the explosion of mobile devices (smartphone, tablet and other connected devices), mobile clients are today the biggest driver for API traffic growth. This is a fundamental shift along with cloud computing and has/will have a profound impact on web APIs.

As they come with their own specificities (varying user location, intermittent internet connectivity, reduced computing and storage capacities), I think that most web APIs providers should/will take this aspect into account when designing their architectures to ensure the best API performances (low latency, geo-based DNS routing, off-line model, etc.)

At this point, I'm not sure how this requirement should translate into a style constraint/properties. Initially I made it as an optional "Mobile" constraint, but I'm open to discuss and reconsider this.