In a presentation recorded at QCon San Francisco, ThoughtWorks' Ian Robinson explains how Atom and AtomPub can be used as part of a RESTful HTTP approach in enterprise projects.
Ian starts by outlining different implementation options for distributing events in an enterprise scenario: Point-to-point, bus, or even polling. He explains how the last of these options can be supported using HTTP and the Atom syndication format, where the format originally designed to notify readers of news sources such as weblogs can be generalized to arbitrary event streams.
Next, Ian explains how HTTP's features, particularly its support for caching and cache validation, can turn polling into a usable alternative. He shows how an archive of events can be navigated using links, and outlines the problems with the 'application/xml' media type.
After explaining how conflicts can be handled, he offers some guidance regarding the applicability of feeds. Finally, Robertson spends some time on advanced caching concepts.
Ian Robertson's presentation goes beyond a simple REST introduction and offers highlights some advanced solutions available to architects applying the REST style.
Watch the full presentation (59 minutes).