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> Roy Fielding made it fairly clear that REST is not strictly associated with HTTP. REST, as an architectural style, is defined by a set of constraints:

Out of curiosity, do you know of any examples of RESTful APIs that use a protocol other than HTTP (say like IMAP or NNTP)?

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He isn't going to provide you an example because there is none meaning full in production. REST uses HTTP because it makes no sense to use it with anything else. REST only makes sense with HTTP. With another socket protocol, there is no need to bother with headers and co.

You're right, there are no other protocols at nearly the scale of HTTP that use REST. I was just pointing out that REST was not strictly associated with HTTP in Roy Fielding's definition. If you look at my other link (Richardson Maturity Model), you can see that RPC-over-HTTP is vulnerable to same criticisms in the OP's link. Hence, I think the issues discussed in the article don't singularly apply to REST.

That is the the real test beyond technical jargon and If someone provides a working example that works over different protocols as you have suggested that will be end of discussion :)

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