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Attending: Joel Farrell, Dan Rehak, Valerie Smothers, James Fiore, Carl Singer.
The group agreed that the REST/SOAP comparison is done and may be published .
For the REST guidelines discussion, Joel referred to the minutes of the Baltimore meeting - 2009-04-28. Joel commented that we reviewed an IBM document at the meeting, He currently does not have permission to reuse the document. Carl forwarded several other links after the last meeting. He asked if participants had any insights based on those links.
Joel summarized there are two documents related to REST. One is a positioning doument to help members decide when to use REST (knowing when to rest), the other a guideline for using rest. We haven't started the guideline yet. There isn't as much in the way of standards specifically for REST. You have to decide what to address and how. In Baltimore we found a document from Sun and a longer document from IBM.
Joel asked what a goal timeframe would be. Valerie commented there is not a lot of awareness of REST. Carl commented that they decided to use REST because it was appropriate. A lot of things, like reliable messaging, were not important. AOA does use SOAP web services for professional profile.
James commented that considering many of the organizations participating, it is significantly easier to implement REST as opposed to WSDL/SOAP because less infrastructure is needed and development is more forgiving. You can implement security in the same way you would for an end user using a browser. It may not be secure or scaleable. Considering the size of the organizations we have in MedBiq, infrastructure and difficulty of WS implementation is a barrier.
Joel commented that having a general approach for REST would be helpful. It would be good to have input from more people. Universities in Europe may have good input. Carl commented that long term, particularly for small members, RESTful web services would be useful. He would like to see open source libraries for REST services. Virtual Patients has been a great example; common code base that can be extended. Running code will be key in promoting adoption.
Valerie asked Carl about the Medscape and CECity project. Carl said they each took their own proprietary approaches. Each implementation is unique. There was no talk of developing open source tools. CECity can talk internally about providing open source components. Valerie commented that this would be something for customers to use. Carl agreed it would cut down how long it takes to implement APIs. Larger companies have apis and code libraries that "take the pain" out of implementing. Joel added that having libraries that people can contribute to would be good thing.
Joel asked what steps we need to take. He asked if CECity has a formal document of their REST services. Carl replied that they have a document of their API calls, standardizing on ATOM format, etc. They can provide info from their documentation. Joel commented that it would be useful as input; we wouldn't verbatim reuse the language. It would help inform our work. We want to ensure our guidelines are in line with how members are implementing REST.
Valerie suggested coming up with an outline as a good next step.
Joel will seek permission to send IBM document to committee. That is the goal of the output for the next two weeks. The group should gather other work to inform as well. There is information in the minutes from April 28 for the outline.
For the next call:
- Carl will send info from CECity
- Joel will send info from IBM
- Valerie will develop outline based on minutes of the meeting in Baltimore
The group discussed TSC members. James commented that ABIM is the big board. That would be a good organization to involve. We can see if there is someone Jason would suggest. Valerie suggested maybe a European university. Peter may come up with a name, too.