Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit - Enterprise Integration Patterns. Hotto Cocoa o Kudasai I just returned from a 2 week trip to Japan.
One of the more familiar sights was the ridiculous number of Starbucks (スターバックス) coffee shops, especially around Shinjuku and Roppongi. While waiting for my "Hotto Cocoa" I started to think about how Starbucks processes drink orders. REST != HTTP. Roy Fielding has weighed in on the recent "buzzwordiness" (hey, if Colbert can make up "truthiness", then I can make up "buzzwordiness") of calling everything a "REST API", a tactic that has become more en vogue of late as vendors discover that the general programming population is finding the WSDL-based XML services stack too complex to navigate successfully for all but the simplest of projects.
Contrary to what many RESTafarians may be hoping, Roy doesn't gather all these wayward children to his breast and praise their anti-vendor/anti-corporate/anti-proprietary efforts, but instead, blasts them pretty seriously for mangling his term: I am getting frustrated by the number of people calling any HTTP-based interface a REST API.