[Profile picture of Ruben Verborgh]

Ruben Verborgh

The Missing Links – How the Description Format RESTdesc Applies the Linked Data Vision to Connect Hypermedia APIs

Ruben Verborgh, Thomas Steiner, Rik Van de Walle, and Joaquim Gabarró Vallés

“Web 1.0 connected humans with machines. Web 2.0 connected humans with humans. Web 3.0 connects machines with machines.” On the one hand, an incredible amount of valuable data is described by billions of triples, machine-accessible and interconnected thanks to the promises of Linked Data. On the other hand, rest is a scalable, resource-oriented architectural style that, like the Linked Data vision, recognizes the importance of links between resources. Hypermedia APIs are resources, too—albeit dynamic ones—and unfortunately, neither Linked Data principles, nor the rest-implied self-descriptiveness of hypermedia APIs sufficiently describe them to allow for long-envisioned realizations like automatic service discovery and composition. We argue that describing inter-resource links—similarly to what the Linked Data movement has done for data—is the key to machine-driven consumption of APIs. In this paper, we explain how the description format RESTdesc captures the functionality of APIs by explaining the effect of dynamic interactions, effectively complementing the Linked Data vision.

full text BibTeX other citation formats

Published in 2012 in Proceedings of the First Linked APIs workshop at the Ninth Extended Semantic Web Conference.

Keywords:

Read this article online

Cite this article in your work

Cite this article easily using its BibTeX entry: 

@inproceedings{verborgh_lapis_2012,
  title = {The Missing Links -- How the Description Format {RESTdesc} Applies the Linked Data Vision to Connect Hypermedia {APIs}},
  author = {Verborgh, Ruben and Steiner, Thomas and Van de Walle, Rik and Gabarr\'o Vall\'es, Joaquim},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the First Linked APIs workshop at the Ninth Extended Semantic Web Conference},
  year = 2012,
  month = may,
  url = {http://lapis2012.linkedservices.org/papers/3.pdf},
}

Alternatively, pick a reference of your choice below:

ACM
Ruben Verborgh, Thomas Steiner, Rik Van de Walle, and Joaquim Gabarró Vallés. 2012. The Missing Links – How the Description Format RESTdesc Applies the Linked Data Vision to Connect Hypermedia APIs. In Proceedings of the First Linked APIs workshop at the Ninth Extended Semantic Web Conference.
APA
Verborgh, R., Steiner, T., Van de Walle, R., & Gabarró Vallés, J. (2012, May). The Missing Links – How the Description Format RESTdesc Applies the Linked Data Vision to Connect Hypermedia APIs. Proceedings of the First Linked APIs Workshop at the Ninth Extended Semantic Web Conference.
IEEE
R. Verborgh, T. Steiner, R. Van de Walle, and J. Gabarró Vallés, “The Missing Links – How the Description Format RESTdesc Applies the Linked Data Vision to Connect Hypermedia APIs,” in Proceedings of the First Linked APIs workshop at the Ninth Extended Semantic Web Conference, 2012.
LNCS
Verborgh, R., Steiner, T., Van de Walle, R., Gabarró Vallés, J.: The Missing Links – How the Description Format RESTdesc Applies the Linked Data Vision to Connect Hypermedia APIs. In: Proceedings of the First Linked APIs workshop at the Ninth Extended Semantic Web Conference (2012).
MLA
Verborgh, Ruben, et al. “The Missing Links – How the Description Format RESTdesc Applies the Linked Data Vision to Connect Hypermedia APIs.” Proceedings of the First Linked APIs Workshop at the Ninth Extended Semantic Web Conference, 2012.

Discuss this article