Why do we need RESTful Web Services repository?

Question

I'm working on a project where i am using quite a few RESTful web services,but all of a sudden i am told that i need to use a repository for JAX-RS . (it's better to say that I'll have to do this because it's a part of College Project).

I've read some info in Wikipedia and I've also downloaded WSo2 Governance Registry binary.I see that it's not easy technology, there are special frameworks for building RESTful apps.

I remember that several years ago SOAP was very popular (fashionable?) and WSDL for publishing them in UDDI repositories,pardon me if i say anything wrong because have never worked with SOAP.

It seems to me that REST Repository is another 'last word of fashion' (or I can be totally wrong because I haven't ever seen REST Repository in practice).

Can you give me some examples where REST Repository should be used and why we can't do the same without REST Repository ?

Answer 1

To directly answer your question, there is no requirement for a "repository/directory/registry" for service discovery in REST based systems. Generally clients discover services via hypermedia links found in previously retrieved representations. This is true for runtime discovery.

For design time discovery by developers there are various mechanisms available for finding new services. Search engines like programmable web, marketplaces like Microsoft's Azure OData services and more recent efforts like apicommons.org. Also, Microsoft's recent Azure AppService has a marketplace of APIs.

RESTful services do have the requirement that media types that are used should be registered in IANA registries .

It would be interesting to know what specific examples your teacher is referring to when they use the word "Repository" because it is not a term I hear used at all in the API world for service discovery.