A question we commonly get at EnterpriseWeb is whether our platform follows REST or not. Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web, and is perhaps best known for providing a lightweight, uniform Web-style application programming interface (API) to server-based resources. One the one hand, EnterpriseWeb can both consume and expose any type of interface, including tightly coupled APIs, Web Services, as well as RESTful APIs, and the platform has no requirement that customers must build distributed hypermedia systems. It would be easy to conclude, therefore, that while EnterpriseWeb supports REST, it is not truly RESTful.
Such a conclusion, however, would neglect the broader architectural context for EnterpriseWeb. The platform builds on top of and extends REST as the foundation for the dynamic, enterprise-class architectural style we call Agent-Oriented Architecture (AOA). EnterpriseWeb’s intelligent agent, SmartAlex, leverages RESTful constraints as part of the core functionality of the EnterpriseWeb platform. The resulting AOA pattern essentially reinvents application functionality and enterprise integration, heralding a new paradigm for distributed computing.
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