Sebastopol, CA—REST, according to Jon Flanders, author of the just-released RESTful .NET (O'Reilly, US $39.99), is an architecture that uses the strengths of the Web to build services. It proposes a set of constraints that simplifies development and encourages more scalable designs. Developers—the majority of whom were outside of Microsoft—began to adopt this set of architectural constraints shortly after it was proposed some years ago. Many toolkits embraced REST as the major driver for building applications and services, especially Ruby on Rails, which soared in popularity.
Now to be fair, Flanders adds, there were a few inside the Microsoft camp who jumped on the REST technology early on, recognizing it for what it was. And Flanders soon truly "got it" himself. "The 'it' that I got wasn't about the technological details, since I understood that part pretty well..." Flanders explains. "The 'it' was why people are so enthusiastic about REST.
"I think using REST should be the first choice when building services," says Flanders, "and that RPC should be chosen only if the system requires some particular feature exclusive to RPC technology (like SOAP and WS-*)."
Believing that all developers deserve to have the tools they need to build highly scalable, loosely coupled services using REST techniques, Flanders wrote RESTful .NET as a hands-on tutorial to help developers use WCF and other components of the .NET 3.5 Framework to build, deploy and use REST-based web services in a variety of application scenarios.
The book provides a complete guide to the WCF REST programming model for building web services consumed either by machines or humans. Readers learn how to:
RESTful .NET introduces readers to the ideas of REST and RESTful architecture, and includes a detailed discussion of how the Web/REST model plugs into the WCF architecture.
"While REST is simple, WCF is not. To really understand and exploit this part of WCF requires a knowledgeable and experienced guide. I don't know anybody who's better suited for this role than Jon Flanders. ...Jon is first-rate at explaining complicated things. This book is the best introduction I've seen to creating and using these services with WCF."
– David Chappell, Chappell & Associates
For a review copy or more information please email kathrynb@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.
Jon Flanders is an instructor for Pluralsight. The author of ASP Internals from Addison-Wesley, Jon holds a J.D. from Hamline University.
Additional Resources:
For more information about the book, including table of contents, index, author bios, and cover graphic, see the catalog page for RESTful .NET.
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