So, how was your day?

Today I volunteered to save a $50mil deal by solving a math problem. Banks are surreal. Having worked at a software company that I deliberately tried to make as insane as possible, I really didn't think I'd ever find myself saying that.

Say hello to the "real/actual expert!" Oh yes, my Elite Management Science skills are rusty, but not yet gone.

REST is searchable

pphaneuf doesn't believe me when I say that REST interfaces are indexable without special plugins. I currently think they are, although it wouldn't have occurred to me until I read STREST (Service-Trampled REST by Duncan Cragg.

Basically, the idea is this: REST is a design model that uses URLs in a particular way. The key thing about it: browsing the contents of a service should always be harmless and doable using just GET; if that's true, then the GET requests will respond with URLs that point to other GETtable data, and so on. Even if it can't understand exactly what the content is, Google will be able to index it. And that's very cool.

Contrast that with a SOAP service that has a getListOfFiles() function you need to call; Google doesn't stand a chance. (Though now that I've said it, watch them try to prove me wrong. You know who you are, former NITIites. Trying to make me look bad!)