Questa risposta è basata su estratti da Stili architettonici e
la progettazione di architetture software di rete , dottorato di Roy T. Fielding
Si legge la Introduzione alla tesi di Fielding, in parte:
Over the past six years, the REST architectural style has been used to guide the design and development of the architecture for the modern Web
Capitolo 5 Sezione 5.3.2 leggi , in parte:
REST does not restrict communication to a particular protocol, but it
does constrain the interface between components, and hence the scope
of interaction and implementation assumptions that might otherwise be
made between components.
For example, the Web's primary transfer
protocol is HTTP, but the architecture also includes seamless access
to resources that originate on pre-existing network servers, including
FTP, Gopher, and WAIS. Interaction with those services
is restricted to the semantics of a REST connector.
This constraint
sacrifices some of the advantages of other architectures, such as the
stateful interaction of a relevance feedback protocol like WAIS, in
order to retain the advantages of a single, generic interface for
connector semantics. In return, the generic interface makes it
possible to access a multitude of services through a single proxy. If
an application needs the additional capabilities of another
architecture, it can implement and invoke those capabilities as a
separate system running in parallel, similar to how the Web
architecture interfaces with "telnet" and "mailto" resources.
Altre informazioni in Capitolo 6 Fielding goes per dare esempi di come REST era l'unità dietro l'URI ( 5 ) e HTTP ( 6 , 7 )
Da questo possiamo vedere che i contributi di Fielding agli standard Web (incluso HTTP) sono stati guidati dai principi di definizione o dai vincoli dello stile architettonico REST.