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Java Finally Gets REST Support

Stefan Tilkov, May 24, 2006

Mark wonders what this is supposed to mean:

Java EE 5 (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5), the new version of the platform, supports an alternative Web services technology.
Programming in the REST (Representational State Transfer) style is enabled in Java EE 5, said Joe Keller, Sun vice president of marketing for SOA & Integration Platforms. “The improvement in the Java APIs for Web services included the ability to call in and out of Java using REST,” Keller said.

I admit that this sounds rather strange, since one of the key points in favor of RESTful HTTP services is that you can provide and consume them on basically any platform — including Java, which has thus always supported REST. My guess is that what is referred to is the support for RESTful services in JAX-WS 2.0 (which is part Java EE 5). Marc Hadley had a good explanation a while back.