State Transitions in a REST-based Network
Question: If I am sitting at a browser then I can understand how the decision is
made on which hyperlink to select (my brain decides). But if this is
all being done programmatically, without human intervention, then how
will the decision be made on which hyperlink to select?
Answer: The XML hyperlinking technology is XLink. With this technology in
addition to providing a URL to the target resource, you can also provide
data about the resource you are linking to (using xlink:role). If the
client application is able to understand the semantics of xlink:role then it
will be able to make a decision on which resource to choose next.
This is ultra cool - the application is dynamically making decisions
about what resources to access (it is becoming a self-propelled automata).
If the client application is not able to evaluate the xlink:role attribute
then the decision will need to be made out-of-band (that is, the decision
must have been made when the application was written).