Also, “REST is simple, not easy”. Google, you’ll find a lot of people saying just that. I’m in the “simple, not easy” camp, so anytime someone says “but you said REST is easy!”, my response is “but you didn’t listen to me!”

Likewise, the word “tooling”. There’s a strong aversion to tooling which is different from aversion to tools. There’s a strong aversion to Java typing by people who use languages will all sorts of interesting typing systems. There’s a strong aversion to EJB by people who want to do CRUD remotely, etc.

Some people want to throw out the dirty bath water, not the baby.

“I *know* we (as in the world, not just Axis2) hasn’t cracked the nut on the “right” programming model for REST yet.”

If you come up with something designed around REST/WebArch, that provides better tools but doesn’t require tooling, that helps make it easy without making it un-simple, you’ll find a willing audience.

Look at Rails, it only solves some pieces of the puzzle (RESTful resources), but it solves them along these lines. Very well received. Look at Ode, we’re doing some work around resources, only XML for now, only for invoke. We positioned it as step one in a long term strategy, and so far I’m seeing people excited they can get some things done, even if we’re yet to solve all the world’s problems.

All this to say, if you understand where other people are coming from, you’ll get a lot of help in charting out the solution. And you don’t need to have all the answers, you can solve the puzzle one piece at a time.

Isn’t it ironic that after years of saying “REST is so easy you can just do it; you don’t need no stinkin’ tools” (yes, I’m paraphrasing) that Tim (as a symbol of the WS-Loyal Opposition) would now say “REST isn’t taking off because we haven’t figured out tools”?? Can’t have the cake and eat it, you know. I don’t know where that quote you found came from, but I can certainly find quotes from Tim and other RESTafarians against tools if you really want me to.

Now going back to your comments about Axis and REST – I TOTALLY agree that what Axis2 has is not REST support but rather HTTP programming support. Believe it or not, I am *constantly* thinking about different ways of programming REST and in fact proposed a talk on programming models for REST for QCon ’08 SF (but it didn’t get accepted). I *know* we (as in the world, not just Axis2) hasn’t cracked the nut on the “right” programming model for REST yet.