Techniques for

Composing REST services

Cesare Pautasso
Faculty of Informatics
University of Lugano, Switzerland

c.pautasso@ieee.org
http://www.pautasso.info
Abstract
 Novel trends in Web services technology challenge
the assumptions made by current standards for
process-based service composition. For example,
most existing RESTful Web service APIs (which do
not rely on the Web Service Description Language),
cannot natively be composed using the WS-BPEL
language.
 In this talk we introduce the problem of composing
RESTful services and compare it to Web 2.0 service
mashups. We cover several real-world examples
demonstrating how existing composition languages
can be evolved to cope with REST. We conclude by
showing that the uniform interface and hyper-
linking capabilities of RESTful services provides an
excellent abstraction for exposing in a controlled
way the state of business process as a resource.
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 2
About Cesare Pautasso
 Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Informatics,
University of Lugano, Switzerland (since Sept 2007)
Research Projects:
 SOSOA – Self- Organizing Service Oriented Architectures
 CLAVOS – Continuous Lifelong Analysis and Verification of
Open Services
 BPEL for REST
 Researcher at IBM Zurich Research Lab (2007)
 Post- Doc at ETH Zürich
 Software:
JOpera: Process Support for more than Web services
http://www.jopera.org/
 Ph.D. at ETH Zürich, Switzerland (2004)

 Representations:
http://www.pautasso.info/ (Web)
http://twitter.com/pautasso/ (Twitter Feed)

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 3

 Why Composition?

 Composition is the key SOA principle

with the goal of enabling

service reuse
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 4
 REST and Reuse

 Uniform Interface (Reuse Contract)

 Status Codes (Reuse Metadata)
 Representations (Reuse Media Types)
 Middleware (Reuse caching, security,
load balancing, proxies components)

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 5

REST in one slide
 Web Services expose their
data and functionality trough PUT
resources identified by URI R
 Uniform Interface Principle: GET
Clients interact with resources POST
through a fix set of verbs. DELETE
Example HTTP:
GET (read), POST (create), PUT (update), DELETE
 Multiple representations for the same resource
 Hyperlinks model resource relationships and valid
state transitions for dynamic protocol description
and discovery
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 6
 REST and Reuse

 Uniform Interface (Reuse Contract)

 Status Codes (Reuse Metadata)
 Representations (Reuse Media Types)
 Middleware (Reuse caching, security,
load balancing, proxies components)

 Yes, but what about reusing entire RESTful

services?

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 7

 RESTful Composition Techniques

1. Defining RESTful service composition

2. Example: DoodleMap

3. What about mashups?

4. BPM and REST

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 8

REST Architectural Elements
Client/Server Layered Stateless Communication Cache

Proxy
User Agent Origin Server

Gateway

Connector (HTTP) Cache

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 9

Basic Setup
HTTP

User Agent Origin Server

Adding Caching
HTTP HTTP

Caching Origin Server User Agent Caching

User Agent Origin Server
HTTP

Caching Caching
User Agent Origin Server

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 10

Proxy or Gateway?
Intermediaries forward (and may translate) requests and responses

HTTP HTTP
Client Proxy Origin Server
A proxy is chosen by the Client (for caching, or access control)

HTTP HTTP
Client Gateway Origin Server
The use of a gateway (or reverse proxy) is imposed by the server

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 11

REST Middleware for Scalability

Cache

Proxy/Gateway Origin
Server
Clients

 One example of REST middleware is to help

with the scalability of a server, which may
need to service a very large number of
clients

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 12

REST Middleware for Composition

Proxy/Gateway Origin
Server
Clients

 Composition shifts the attention to the client

which should consume and aggregate from
many servers

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 13

REST Middleware for Composition

Client Composite Origin

RESTful Servers
service

 The “proxy” intermediate element which

aggregates the resources provided by
multiple servers plays the role of the
composition controller of a composite
RESTful service
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 14
 Composite Resources

DELETE
PUT

GET
C
DELETE DELETE
POST PUT PUT

GET
R GET
S
POST POST

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 15

 Composite Resources
 The composite resource only aggregates the
state of its component resources

R S
State R State S

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 16

 Composite Resources
 The composite resource augments (or caches)
the state of its component resources

C State C

R S
State R State S

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 17

Enter HATEOAS
 Web Services expose their
data and functionality trough PUT
resources identified by URI R
 Uniform Interface Principle: GET
Clients interact with resources POST
through a fix set of verbs. DELETE
Example HTTP:
GET (read), POST (create), PUT (update), DELETE
 Multiple representations for the same resource
 Hyperlinks model resource relationships and valid
state transitions for dynamic protocol description
and discovery
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 18
 Composite Representations
DELETE
PUT
DELETE

Composite GET
R PUT
Representation
POST GET
S
C
POST
LinkR

LinkS

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 19

 Composite Representation Pattern
Composite
Representation
Origin
Server

Client Origin
Servers

 A composite representation is interpreted by

the client that follows its hyperlinks and
aggregates the state of the referenced
component resources
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 20
 Bringing it all together

Composite
Representation
Composite Origin
RESTful Servers
service

Client Origin
Servers

 A composite representation can be

produced by a composite service too

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 21

 Doodle Map Example

Composite
Representation
Composite Origin
RESTful Servers
service

Client Origin
Servers

 Vote on a meeting place based on its

geographic location

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 22

1. Composite Resource

DELETE
PUT

GET
C
DELETE DELETE
POST PUT PUT

GET
R GET
S
POST POST

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 23

1. Composite Resource

DELETE

GET
C
DELETE
POST PUT

GET
R GET
S
POST

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 24

2. Composite Representation

DM DELETE
GET
G
LinkG
GET
C
LinkC DELETE
POST PUT
LinkD
GET
R GET
S
POST

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 25

 Demo
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 26
Was it just a Mashup?

Mashup
REST
Composition

(It depends on the definition of Mashup)

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 27
 Moving state around
 Read-only vs. Read/Write
DELETE
PUT

GET
C
DELETE DELETE
POST PUT PUT

GET
R GET
S
POST POST

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 28

 Simply aggregating data (feeds)
 Read-only vs. Read/write

GET
C

GET
R GET
S

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 29

 Is your composition reusable?
 UI vs. API Composition

Composite
API
Representation
Composite Origin
RESTful Servers

UI
service

 Reusable
Client Origin services vs.
Servers Reusable
Widgets
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 30
 Single-Origin Sandbox
 Can you always do this
from a web browser?

Composite
Representation
Composite Origin
RESTful Servers
service

Client Origin
Servers

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 31

 Single-Origin Sandbox
 Security Policies on the client may not
always allow it to aggregate data from
multiple different sources
Composite
Representation
Composite N Origin
RESTful Servers
service

Client 1 Origin Server

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 32

Complementary
Read-Only
Read/Write

UI Mashup
REST API

Composition
Reusable
Situational Service
Sandboxed

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 33

 RESTful Composition Techniques

1. Defining RESTful service composition

2. Example: DoodleMap

3. What about mashups?

4. BPM and REST

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 34

Web Service Composition Today

The WS-BPEL process

model is layered on top of WS-BPEL 2.0
the service model defined
by WSDL 1.1. […] WSDL 1.1
Both the process and its
partners are exposed as
WSDL services

[BPEL 2.0 Standard, Section 3]

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 35

RESTful Web Services APIs…

WSDL 1.1

…do not
use
WSDL
1.1

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 36

 BPEL/WSDL 2.0
WSDL 2.0 HTTP Binding can wrap RESTful Web Services
(WS-BPEL 2.0 does not support WSDL 2.0)

BPEL WSDL 2.0 PUT

Operations
...
Op_1
<Invoke Op_1> Op_2
Op_3 GET
R
<Invoke Op_2> Op_4

... HTTP Binding POST

DELETE
<Invoke Op_3> Op URI Method
Op_1 R PUT
PUT
<Invoke Op_4> Op_2 R GET
GET
Op_3 R POST
POST
... Op_4 R DELETE
DELETE

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 37

 BPM RESTful
Workflow Web Service
Languages Composition

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 38

 Solutions
BPM RESTful
Workflow Web Service

1. Abstract Workflow Languages Composition

 Service invocation technology does not matter

2. Concrete Workflow
 Expose service invocation BPM RESTful
Workflow Web Service
LanguagesComposition
technologies as explicit constructs
in the workflow language
3. RESTful Workflow
BPM
RESTful

 Workflow as one kind of resource Workflow

Web Service
Languages
Composition

exposed by a RESTful service

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 39
 BPEL/WSDL 2.0
WSDL 2.0 HTTP Binding can wrap RESTful Web Services
(WS-BPEL 2.0 does not support WSDL 2.0)

BPEL WSDL 2.0 PUT

Operations
...
Op_1
<Invoke Op_1> Op_2
Op_3 GET
R
<Invoke Op_2> Op_4

... HTTP Binding POST

DELETE
<Invoke Op_3> Op URI Method
Op_1 R PUT
PUT
<Invoke Op_4> Op_2 R GET
GET
Op_3 R POST
POST
... Op_4 R DELETE
DELETE

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 40

 BPEL for REST

Make REST interaction primitives first-class language

constructs

BPEL for REST PUT

...
<Put R>
GET
R
<Get R>
... POST
DELETE
R>
<Post R>
<Delete R>
<Delete R>
...

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 41

 BPEL for REST
 Dynamically publish resources from BPEL
processes and handle client requests

BPEL for REST PUT

<Resource P>

PUT
<onGet>
<Put R> GET
R
<Get S> POST
GET
P </onGet>
DELETE
<onDelete> PUT
POST
DELETE <Post R>
<Delete S>
GET
S
</onDelete>
</Resource> POST
DELETE
©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 42
 RESTful Workflows

PUT P

GET
R
POST
DELETE
Use the resource interface
abstraction to publish
the state of the workflow

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 43

 DoodleMap as RESTful workflow

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 44

 Conclusion

 Applying the SOA composition principle to

REST gives interesting results
 Thanks to hyperlinks, REST brings a new
(more dynamic and loosely coupled)
twist to SOA composition
 Composing RESTful services helps to build
mashups, but is different
 A RESTful API is the perfect abstraction for
publishing the state of a workflow

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 45

 References
 R. Fielding, Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-
based Software Architectures, PhD Thesis,
University of California, Irvine, 2000
 C. Pautasso, O. Zimmermann, F. Leymann, RESTful Web
Services vs. Big Web Services: Making the Right Architectural
Decision, Proc. of the 17th International World Wide Web
Conference (WWW2008), Bejing, China, April 2008
 C. Pautasso, BPEL for REST, Proc. of the 7th International
Conference on Business Process Management
(BPM 2008), Milano, Italy, September 2008
 C. Pautasso, Composing RESTful Services with JOpera,
In: Proc. of the International Conference on Software
Composition (SC2009), July 2009, Zurich, Switzerland.
© 46
 Raj Balasubramanian,
Benjamin Carlyle,
Thomas Erl,
Cesare Pautasso,
SOA with REST,
Prentice Hall,
to appear in 2010

©2009 - Cesare Pautasso 47