The "RESTful" Services: Are they "RESTful" Yet? : - A Follow-up Study

Sammanfattning: The Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture style surfaced quickly to be the favorable scheme to standardize the communication for network-based hypermedia systems due to its uniform discipline. As a result, various giant web services adopted the REST architecture as their primary architectural choice for their services. Regardless of the REST style's uniform discipline, de-facto practices appeared among REST services. Consequently, numerous studies have analyzed REST services and found to a significant extent, misalignments between the theoretical aspects of REST and the practices of REST. One of the studies examined a set of services that claimed to be REST against a class of 17 design criteria that realize the principles of the REST architecture, and it found that the majority of the subject services were inconsistent in applying the REST principles. This study has followed the research mentioned earlier and examined a limited set of REST services and surveyed REST practitioners to examine their practices against the same class of the 17 design criteria to determine to what extent they are applying the 17 design criteria and analyze the statistical differences between the practices of REST services and the practices of REST practitioners. The study results show that REST services and REST practitioners applied most of the 17 design criteria. However, the study also found heterogeneous practices in REST services that go against the principles of the REST style. Furthermore, the statistical analysis results suggest a misalignment between the practices of REST services and REST practitioners in relation to the 17 design criteria.