Resource-oriented architecture
 | It has been suggested that this article be merged into Representational State Transfer. (Discuss) Proposed since July 2007. |
Resource Oriented Architecture (or, ROA) is the architecture of the [1] web. Based on the seminal concept known as [2] REST, or Representational State Transfer (see Roy Thomas Fielding's Doctoral Thesis "Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures" [3]), this architecture proposes that the central abstraction on the web is a resource.
The first published notion of Resource Oriented Architecture seem to have been the blog entry, posted on August 8, 2006 ([4] "Replacing Service Oriented Architecture with Resource Oriented Architecture" by Alex Bunardzic). Following a rather lively debate around this newly introduced concept, an important book ([5] "RESTful Web Services", by Leonard Richardson & Sam Ruby) was published in May 2007.
Why the Web?
While REST is a set of architectural guidelines applicable to various types of computing infrastructures, Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA) is only coupled with the web. This architecture is therefore useful mostly to businesses that consider the web as the computing platform of choice.
The power of the web seems to mostly reside in its ability to lower the barriers to entry for human users who may not be highly train in using computing machinery. As such, the web widens the market reach for any business that decides to publish some of its content in electronic format.
On the web, such published content is regarded as a resource [6]. Resource Oriented Architecture takes this situation and elaborates on its initial premises, by offering a fairly uniform and low-tech entry point for the businesses/individuals to join the conversation.