What's This? An Embeddable REST Microkernel!

What's this? An embeddable REST Microkernel? When I first read the announcement from 1060 research, I was extremely skeptical. Why shouldn't I be skeptical? Afterall the anouncement was sprinkled with buzz-words like "XML", "Application Server", "REST", "microkernel", "XQuery", "XML Schema", "XForms", "RelaxNG" and sound bites like "REST-like service architecture" and "Transactional XML processes" "hot module deployment, hot restart".

However, being one of those people completely disillusioned with the status quo and the hype, I decided to dig a little deeper than usual.

Peter Rodgers the main proponent has a surprisingly refreshing view of the current state of affairs in his whitepaper about the product. It's rare that I find a marketing document that's not only insightful but something I can agree with. I recommend anybody into this SOA stuff has got to read his brutally frank take of XML history.

It turns out 1060 Research is a spin-off of work done at HP research labs. This gives a little bit of credibility to some of the seemingly outrageous claims. The download is a bit under 19 megabytes, this may imply there just might be some beef underneath afterall. The product is GPLed, minor drawback, but at least its not completely proprieatary. I find also a blogging application and possibly a bug tracking one that's implemented with the technology. This gives me additional comfort, someone has actually implemented an application based on some wild architectural idea.

I'm running a bit out of time now, so I'll write about more detailed findings later. Coincidentally, I've recently evaluated several BPM systems from well known vendors so I think I'm in a very good position to find out if this is a boat load of crap or worth its weight in gold. Stay tuned!