In-process REST at the BBC

Abstract

Although REST is usually defined as an architectural style for distributed applications, we show how REST principles were adapted to in-process use for a feed processing application generating significant parts of the BBC Sport website and Ceefax (Videotext) output. The simplicity of the resulting system led to significant improvements in reliability, performance, capability and maintainability over the predecessor system, despite the fact that the external (legacy) interfaces were not RESTful. We believe this example shows that REST-like interfaces do not have be constrained to exist exclusively at process boundaries, and conversely that process-internal APIs can benefit from making them more REST-like.