Dan,
Let me address both your comments, and then your questions.
- Both IBM and HP EACH have an implementation of a REST runtime. We are
bringing both. Speaking for the IBM portion, yes - we have something
which is already compliant. Apache CXF is both a JAX-WS and JAX-RS
implementation. In IBM, our JAX-WS implementation is based on Apache
Axis2. Therefore, it was prohibitive to pull in CXF as part of our
runtime. IBM wanted/needed something smaller - it's as simple as that.
Perhaps the answers to your questions may help me position some of this in
a better light...
1)
a) IBMs implementation is JAX-RS 1.0 compliant. With the fact that there
is now a 1.1 spec - so that's something that needs to be looked at.
b) one of the things that I see that are missing are more in depth
examples for how to use JAX-RS in a RESTful fashion. Getting these
written up can benefit BOTH projects
c) Some of the message body readers/writers (to handle other mime types
and programming models) can be shared among both projects. They should be
portable
d) There is no client programming model in JAX-RS. This is something
which I think is needed as REST services get pushed deeper into the
enterprise (and away from the presentation tier). These will help feed
back changes for a later update to JAX-RS. Look at Jersey, RESTlet,
RESTeasy, CXF (they all offer a client API).
This may be a naive assumption, but I do think there are opportunities to
share capabilities amongst the 2 projects - even letting them pull code
back and forth.
HP was also working on JAX-RS compliance for their implementation (so -
again), it would be a melding of the various runtimes (in a lighter
fashion).
2) 1b, c, d) are examples which we should be able to agree - or get very
very close on. Whether we can get to a single implementation (I don't
know). If we can figure out how to tease them apart into pieces -
perhaps. I haven't, myself, seen the HP code (but our IBM participants
are willing to do whatever it takes to try and quickly come to a joint
resolution between the 2 runtimes).
Getting the various teams together at an ApacheCon is a great idea (but
given the current economic times), I don't know how much it's immediately
practical. I'm think the first step is to at least get things on the
table (i.e. code contributed, discussions formulated, to see how
close/apart we really are) - and go from there.
My question back to you is, do you think we can pull out the JAX-WS
capabilities from CXF?
Regards... Greg
Greg Truty
WebSphere Web Services and REST Architect, IBM Austin
EMail: gtr...@us.ibm.com
Phone: (ext) (512) 286-8985
(Tie) 363-8985
From:
Daniel Kulp <dk...@apache.org>
To:
general@incubator.apache.org
Cc:
Greg Truty/Austin/i...@ibmus, Nicholas L Gallardo/Austin/i...@ibmus, Dustin
Amrhein/Austin/i...@ibmus, Bryant Luk/Austin/i...@ibmus, Jesse A
Ramos/Austin/i...@ibmus, Christopher J Blythe/Raleigh/i...@ibmus, "Baram,
Eliezer" <eba...@hp.com>, el...@hp.com, nadav.fisc...@hp.com, "Snitkovsky,
Martin" <martin.snitkov...@hp.com>, tali.alsaigh-co...@hp.com,
tomer.sh...@hp.com, Michael Rheinheimer/Austin/i...@ibmus
Date:
04/22/2009 02:15 PM
Subject:
Re: Apache Wink Proposal
On Wed April 22 2009 1:07:39 pm Greg Truty wrote:
> Hello all, I would like to formally present the incubator proposal for
> Apache Wink, stand-alone REST toolkit supporting JAX-RS (JSR 311), a
> client runtime and test cases (as well as other items). The full
proposal
> can be found on the wiki at:
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/WinkProposal
> . We are looking forward to all questions and feedback, positive or
> negative. In addition, we welcome all participants and mentors to help
> support the effort.
I know you are expecting a response from me (I've talked to Dims about
this
already) so I might as well get it out of the way.... :-)
So, basically, you wanted a JAX-RS implementation. You looked at Apache
CXF
but it didn't completely meet your needs. Instead of engaging with CXF
(there wasn't any discussion about any of this on the CXF dev/users list)
to
enhance CXF, you fork it in house and update it and enhance it outside of
any
community. Now you want to push it back into Apache, but not with any of
the
CXF community. I just wanted to get that out in the open. Two
implementations isn't a bad thing (think Axis2 and CXF) but the way this
was
approached is a concern.
Next come the hard questions:
1) The proposal mentions it's already JAX-RS TCK compliant. From a
JAX-RS
standpoint, were do you see the community "growing"? I've seen several
projects that come in with their stated goals already "complete" and have
a
tough time getting new committers.
2) What "advantages" would it have over CXF's implementation and/or
Jersey?
(apart from the TCK compliance which CXF is working on now that we got the
TCK) Since Wink would be Apache licensed, I'd expect anything "cool"
would be
pulled into CXF anyway if possible. One advantage of multiple Apache
licensed implementations is that great ideas can also be pulled back and
forth. :-) Obviously, I haven't seen the Wink code so I don't
know
how easy/hard that would be.
One "question" I have when I see projects with duplicate goals is to see
if
the differences could be resolved to a point where only one project is
needed.
I remember with CXF and Axis 2 sitting down in a room at some conference
several years ago (ApacheCon Austin maybe? Don't really remember.) with
Dan
Diephouse, myself, Glen Daniels, Sanjiva and several others involved with
both
projects to try and resolve any issues and possibly merge things. In
that
meeting, we really did conclude we had strong differences in opinions on
designs, priorities, and ideas and it really wasn't possible. That is
quite
OK. At least the discussion occurred. I haven't seen discussions
like
that with CXF/Wink.
I guess from my standpoint, while I'm not "against" the proposal, I'd
definitely like to see it have the option of "graduating" via a merger
with
the CXF implementation and engagements with that community.
--
Daniel Kulp
dk...@apache.org
http://www.dankulp.com/blog
