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Ruben Verborgh

Survey of Semantic Description of REST APIs

Ruben Verborgh, Andreas Harth, Maria Maleshkova, Steffen Stadtmüller, Thomas Steiner, Mohsen Taheriyan, and Rik Van de Walle

The REST architectural style assumes that client and server form a contract with content negotiation, not only on the data format but implicitly also on the semantics of the communicated data, i.e., an agreement on how the data have to be interpreted. In different application scenarios such an agreement requires vendor-specific content types for the individual services to convey the meaning of the communicated data. The idea behind vendor-specific content types is that service providers can reuse content types and service consumers can make use of specific processors for the individual content types. In practice however, we see that many RESTful APIs on the Web simply make use of standard non-specific content types, e.g., text/xml or application/json. Since the agreement on the semantics is only implicit, programmers developing client applications have to manually gain a deep understanding of several APIs from multiple providers.

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Published in 2014 in REST: Advanced Research Topics and Practical Applications.

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Cite this chapter easily using its BibTeX entry: 

@incollection{verborgh_rest_2014,
  title = {Survey of Semantic Description of {REST APIs}},
  author = {Verborgh, Ruben and Harth, Andreas and Maleshkova, Maria and Stadtm\"uller, Steffen and Steiner, Thomas and Taheriyan, Mohsen and Van de Walle, Rik},
  year = 2014,
  booktitle = {REST: Advanced Research Topics and Practical Applications},
  editor = {Pautasso, Cesare and Wilde, Erik and Alarcón, Rosa},
  pages = {69--89},
  publisher = {Springer},
  isbn = {978-1-4614-9298-6},
  url = {http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-9299-3_5},
}

Alternatively, pick a reference of your choice below:

ACM
Ruben Verborgh, Andreas Harth, Maria Maleshkova, Steffen Stadtmüller, Thomas Steiner, Mohsen Taheriyan, and Rik Van de Walle. 2014. Survey of Semantic Description of REST APIs. In REST: Advanced Research Topics and Practical Applications, Cesare Pautasso, Erik Wilde and Rosa Alarcón (eds.). Springer, 69–89.
APA
Verborgh, R., Harth, A., Maleshkova, M., Stadtmüller, S., Steiner, T., Taheriyan, M., & Van de Walle, R. (2014). Survey of Semantic Description of REST APIs. In C. Pautasso, E. Wilde, & R. Alarcón (Eds.), REST: Advanced Research Topics and Practical Applications (pp. 69–89). Springer.
IEEE
R. Verborgh et al., “Survey of Semantic Description of REST APIs,” in REST: Advanced Research Topics and Practical Applications, C. Pautasso, E. Wilde, and R. Alarcón, Eds. Springer, 2014, pp. 69–89.
LNCS
Verborgh, R., Harth, A., Maleshkova, M., Stadtmüller, S., Steiner, T., Taheriyan, M., Van de Walle, R.: Survey of Semantic Description of REST APIs. In: Pautasso, C., Wilde, E., and Alarcón, R. (eds.) REST: Advanced Research Topics and Practical Applications. pp. 69–89. Springer (2014).
MLA
Verborgh, Ruben, et al. “Survey of Semantic Description of REST APIs.” REST: Advanced Research Topics and Practical Applications, edited by Cesare Pautasso et al., Springer, 2014, pp. 69–89.

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