Earthly Powers

Waxing about WADL

WADL is getting some more discussion. There are differing opinions on whether a machine-processable description language for RESTful Web services is necessary. FWIW I have seen WADL add value in the following areas:

1. If you want developers to write clients to consume your services then some documentation is useful (how understated!). WADL can be used to provide a formal structure for documenting RESTful Web services.
   
2. A testing aid. Testing tools can consume a WADL document and help a developer quickly perform some tests.

In some respects one can view a WADL document as increasing the 'connectedness' of a Web service since a WADL representation returned from a service provides further links to that service that can be followed.

Posted at 07:29PM May 30, 2007 by Paul Sandoz in REST  |  Comments[0]