NetKernel Concepts

NetKernel supports a logical computing model that is focused on information. This is just like the World Wide Web. In the Web you request information by using a logical address such as http://www.1060research.com and you get back a representation of the information (a web page in this case).

NetKernel is based on ideas behind the World Wide Web called REST - or Representational State Transfer. REST is an architectural style, just as object-oriented programming is a programming style.

NetKernel takes REST much further, defining the resource-oriented computing (ROC) model. The REST style and the ROC model are surprisingly simple and can be described by a few principles, including:

• Resources are abstract and are identified by a URI address.
• Requests for resources result in a physical resource-representation being returned in the response.
• Resources are located in an address space.
• Relationships may be established between address spaces.

When developing a system with NetKernel, processing is defined at a logical level using resources and services. The following pages describe these concepts in more detail.