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Ruben Verborgh

The Fallacy of the Multi-API Culture: Conceptual and Practical Benefits of Representational State Transfer (REST)

Ruben Verborgh, Seth van Hooland, Aaron Straup Cope, Sebastian Chan, Erik Mannens, and Rik Van de Walle

The paper revisits a decade after its conception the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style and analyses its relevance to address current challenges from the Library and Information Science (LIS) discipline. Conceptual aspects of REST are reviewed and a generic architecture to support REST is presented. The relevance of the architecture is demonstrated with the help of a case-study based on the collection registration database of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. We argue that the “resources and representations” model of REST is a sustainable way for the management of Web resources in a context of constant technological evolutions. When making information resources available on the Web, a resource-oriented publishing model can avoid the costs associated with the creation of multiple interfaces. This paper re-examines the conceptual merits of REST and translates the architecture into actionable recommendations for the LIS discipline.

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Published in 2015 in Journal of Documentation.

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Cite this article easily using its BibTeX entry: 

@article{verborgh_jod_2015,
  title = {The Fallacy of the Multi-{API} Culture: Conceptual and Practical Benefits of Representational State Transfer {(REST)}},
  author = {Verborgh, Ruben and van Hooland, Seth and Cope, Aaron Straup and Chan, Sebastian and Mannens, Erik and Van de Walle, Rik},
  journal = {Journal of Documentation},
  volume = 71,
  number = 2,
  month = mar,
  year = 2015,
  pages = {233--252},
  publisher = {Emerald},
  url = {http://freeyourmetadata.org/publications/rest.pdf},
  doi = {10.1108/JD-07-2013-0098},
}

Alternatively, pick a reference of your choice below:

ACM
Ruben Verborgh, Seth van Hooland, Aaron Straup Cope, Sebastian Chan, Erik Mannens, and Rik Van de Walle. 2015. The Fallacy of the Multi-API Culture: Conceptual and Practical Benefits of Representational State Transfer (REST). Journal of Documentation 71, 2 (March 2015), 233–252.
APA
Verborgh, R., van Hooland, S., Cope, A. S., Chan, S., Mannens, E., & Van de Walle, R. (2015). The Fallacy of the Multi-API Culture: Conceptual and Practical Benefits of Representational State Transfer (REST). Journal of Documentation, 71(2), 233–252.
IEEE
R. Verborgh, S. van Hooland, A. S. Cope, S. Chan, E. Mannens, and R. Van de Walle, “The Fallacy of the Multi-API Culture: Conceptual and Practical Benefits of Representational State Transfer (REST),” Journal of Documentation, vol. 71, no. 2, pp. 233–252, Mar. 2015.
LNCS
Verborgh, R., van Hooland, S., Cope, A.S., Chan, S., Mannens, E., Van de Walle, R.: The Fallacy of the Multi-API Culture: Conceptual and Practical Benefits of Representational State Transfer (REST). Journal of Documentation. 71, 233–252 (2015).
MLA
Verborgh, Ruben, et al. “The Fallacy of the Multi-API Culture: Conceptual and Practical Benefits of Representational State Transfer (REST).” Journal of Documentation, vol. 71, no. 2, Emerald, Mar. 2015, pp. 233–52.

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