Integration - eXist: A NoSQL Database and Application Development Platform - page 305

The last choice in this flowchart— battle-worn or state-of-the-art ?—may need some
clarification. By way of explanation, the REST Server API is stable and has been
around for some years, with many organizations frequently using it. So, if you have a
short-term project in mind that needs to be delivered immediately on a solid technol‐
ogy base, this is probably the correct choice for you. Conversely, the RESTXQ frame‐
work is relatively new and easier to use, but while there are several organizations
already using it, it is still very much under development. Many believe that RESTXQ
will eventually replace the REST Server API, as it offers a superset of that
functionality.
Remote APIs
There are many remote APIs available for eXist, and in addition it is possible to
develop your own RESTful HTTP APIs using XQuery with either the REST Server
API (see “REST Server API” on page 319 ) or RESTXQ (see “RESTXQ” on page 353 ).
Which API you should use depends on many factors, but if your concern is users
manipulating documents we would recommend the WebDAV API (see the next sec‐
tion) for its simplicity and ease of use. Likewise, if you want to quickly build a simple
REST API, RESTXQ (see “RESTXQ” on page 353 ) could be a good candidate. If you are
serious about building a stable bridge with eXist, you should study each option avail‐
able to you in this chapter before making a decision, as each has its advantages and
disadvantages.
WebDAV
Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is an IETF standard ( RFC
4918 ) that focuses predominantly on the distributed authoring of documents. The
name can be somewhat confusing, because while versioning was initially a considera‐
tion, it was perceived as too complicated and shelved. Versioning was later added as
an extension to WebDAV in IETF standard RFC 3253 . However, versioning with
WebDAV does not seem to have been widely adopted and is not yet supported in
eXist.
While eXist has had WebDAV support for several years, its interoperability with
some WebDAV clients was less than perfect. eXist 2.0 added a complete rewrite of
the WebDAV server based on the excellent Milton Java WebDAV Server Library .
Milton does a great job of ensuring compatibility with almost all WebDAV clients.
For a list of compatible WebDAV clients, see http://milton.io/guide/m2/docs/
compat.html .
WebDAV is most useful for those who wish to work at the document level (for exam‐
ple, content authors). It is very simple to create and edit documents, and also to man‐
age them by organizing them into folders (collections in eXist) or removing old