Representational State Transfer (REST) is a simple stateless architecture that uses existing web technology and protocols, essentially Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

In the last few years, REST has emerged as a predominant web service design model. It is a simpler alternative to SOAP. The RESTful application programming interface (API) establishes a mapping between create, read, update, and delete operations and the corresponding POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE HTTP actions.

The RESTful interface focuses on the components’ roles and resources, and ignores their internal implementation details. The RESTful API is a client/server model. Therefore, the requests are sent to a server that is component-aware, which masks the intricate details from the users.

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication briefly describes the RESTful API, and demonstrates how clients can use it to build a common management console for their IBM XIV® storage, and for other storage devices that support the RESTful API.

The scope of this paper is solely intended for readers who want to explore and experiment with the XIV RESTful API capabilities. Most of the examples will be shown using the cURL tool.