T6: Sun Distinguished Engineer Mark Hapner Explores WADL and URIs as Types

Mark Hapner, Distinguished Engineer and SOA Strategist at Sun Microsystems, explores WADL and URIs as data types during a June 24 presentation. Mark is presenting a DataServices World 2008 session titled "WADL, URIs as Database Types, Tricks of the Architect's Trade". Mark's presentation will run from 3:00 - 3:50 pm at the DataServices World Spring 2008 conference, which is co-located with SOAWorld 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

Abstract

URIs are the lingua franca of the web. They are in every web page and every HTTP request. In a practical sense, they represent the realization of the web. Without them, the web would cease to exist. The situation is very different in the world of the RDBMS. Here, URIs are interlopers. Some RDBMS have provided basic support for URIs via their object extension facilities; however, URIs are still not considered a formal part of RDBMS schema design. This talk explores how URI could evolve to become as important to RDBMS Schemas as it is to the web.

One aspect of URI 'types' this presentation will cover is the use of Web Application Description Language (WADL). WADL has been described as SQL Schema meets REST. WADL is metadata describes the functional and structural aspects of a URI 'type' that a web site or other provider offers through HTTP.

Biography

Mark Hapner is a Sun Distinguished Engineer and is currently SOA Strategist for Sun Software. He helps formulate Sun's SOA and composite application strategy spanning Java Standards, Web Service Standards and Sun products. He is also Sun's WS-I Board Member.

Mark was previously Lead Architect for Java EE and was responsible for guiding the overall architecture of J2EE 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. Earlier he was co spec lead of the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) specification and spec lead of the Java Message Service (JMS) specification.