REST and data sources

Dare Obasanjo has recently posted an interesting entry commenting on the formats Astoria will support.

What actually attracted my attention was the very first sentence saying :

"I’ve mentioned in previous posts that various folks at Microsoft have come to grips with the fact that RESTful Web services are the best way to expose data sources on the Web".

I personally believe this is exactly what RESTful Web Services are best at : at exposing data sources on the Web. Furthermore, I feel it's public data sources (those sources which are visible to more than one consumer) which can be exposed in a most efficient manner. It's when dealing with such public sources when most important RESTful properties such as linkability start paying off IMHO.

By no means I wish to imply that this is what Dare wanted to say. It is just what is said in that sentence fits perfectly well into my current view on what RESTful services are best suited for.

I'm still not convinced/certain that RESTful Web Services are the best fit for solving all types of problems in a web services space. I've heard some other people saying the same and I agree with them. I'll muse more about it later.