Archives
-
My thoughts about RETRO: A RESTful Transactions Model
Transactions has typically been one of the aspects that the WS-* followers continuously point out as one of the weaknesses of the REST model. Even though we all agree that atomic transactions in distributed systems are JUST A BAD IDEA and everybody that follows Werner Vogels's lectures knows that the eventually consistent model is the way to go, we can't deny that transactions (conceptually) are an important part of everyday's business processes. However, let's just all be on an agreement that conceptual transactions don't necessarily have to be implemented as atomic transactions and there are simpler and more scalable models that have been successfully adopted by the industry. The RESTful model is not an exception to that rule and consequently we need an efficient way to model transactions without violating the principles of REST.