[[SA-REST]]

     REST strictly refers to a collection of architectural principles. The term is also often used in a loose sense to describe any simple interface that transmits domain-specific data over HTTP without an additional messaging layer such as SOAP or session tracking via HTTP cookies. These two meanings can conflict as well as overlap. It is possible to design any large software system in accordance with Fielding's REST architectural style without using the HTTP protocol and without interacting with the world wide web. It is also possible to design simple XML+HTTP interfaces that do not conform to REST principles, and instead follow a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) model. The two different uses of the term REST cause some confusion in technical discussions.

     Representational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term originated in a doctoral dissertation about the web written in 2000 by Roy Fielding, one of the principal authors of the HTTP protocol specification, and has quickly passed into widespread use in the networking community.

     This document defines a set of extension attributes for the Web Services Description Language and XML Schema definition language that allows description of additional semantics of WSDL components. The specification defines how such semantic annotation is accomplished using references to semantic models, e.g. ontologies. SAWSDL does not specify a language for representing the semantic models. Instead it provides mechanisms by which concepts from the semantic models, typically defined outside the WSDL document, can be referenced from within WSDL and XML Schema components using annotations.

     In this paper the authors describe adding semantics to web services useing WSDL-S and the METEOR-S framework. SAWSDL orginated here.

     Current web pages, written in HTML, are chock-full of structured data. When publishers can express the document's metadata, and when tools can read it, a new world of user functionality becomes available, letting users copy and paste structured data between applications and web sites. An event on a web page can be directly imported into a user's desktop calendar. A license on a document can be automatically detected so that the user is informed of his rights automatically. A photo's creator, camera setting information, resolution, and topic can be published to enable structured search and sharing.

     RDFa is a syntax for expressing such metadata in XHTML. The rendered, hypertext data of XHTML is reused by the RDFa markup, so that publishers don't repeat themselves. The underlying abstract metadata representation is RDF, which lets publishers build their own metadata vocabulary, extend others, and evolve their vocabulary with maximal interoperability over time. The metadata is closely tied to the data it describes, so that rendered data can be copied and pasted along with its relevant structure.

     A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.

     "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them." -- Tim O'Reilly

     Ajax, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is meant to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.