Short for Representational State Transfer is an
architectural style for large-scale software design. REST was first articulated
by RoyFielding in his dissertation
as:
"REST emphasizes scalability of component interactions, generality of
interfaces, independent deployment of components, and intermediary
components to reduce interaction latency, enforce security, and encapsulate
legacy systems. I describe the software engineering principles guiding REST
and the interaction constraints chosen to retain those principles,
contrasting them to the constraints of other architectural styles. Finally,
I describe the lessons learned from applying REST to the design of the
Hypertext Transfer Protocol and Uniform Resource Identifier standards, and
from their subsequent deployment in Web client and server software." [Read
the Dissertation]
