Towards a Practical Model to Facilitate Reasoning about REST Extensions and Reuse

Abstract

We believe that there is a need for a practical model to visualize the structure and design rationale of REST, so researchers can study more easily the reutilization of this architectural style or parts of it, to the design of software solutions with different requirements than those of the early WWW.
In this work we propose the utilization of extended influence diagrams to represent the structure and design rationale of an architectural style. The model is evaluated qualitatively by showing how a diagram of REST, populated with information extracted from the doctoral dissertation that introduced the term, is helpful to gain a better understanding of the properties and limitations of this style, and to reason about potential modifications for applications with different goals than those of the early WWW.