Essential Reading on HTTP and REST
Okay, so it's a bit risky to refer to this giant of contemporary computer science as a horse. But, as the saying goes, this is straight from the horse's mouth . Trust me, it doesn't get any more authoritative than this! Roy Fielding is co-author of the HTTP specification and the ubiquitous Apache Web Server. He created the Representational State Transfer (REST) paradigm as an architectural style for the Web. Since then REST has received much well-deserved attention. His doctoral thesis (FREE PDF!) is a seminal work that contains an excellent discussion on the following. Software architectures in general, well worth reading for the survey and rigor contained herein, especially given the lack of consensus on what entails an architecture definition How network-based application architectures (e.g. the Web) are unique, an impressive discourse on the nature and function of the Internet Why Fielding proposed the REST architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems. F...