Some reasoning about REST - right or wrong:

1. REST is an architectural style
2. Basically then REST is a collection of architectural patterns I apply to an application
3. And an application built on REST is The Web

Thus is The Web not just an application? Does it not have a set of core libraries built around a set of core standards that express a set of patterns defined by REST? And in a lot of cases, we’d like to reuse those core bits of code and standards. But remember that all these things, whilst guided by REST principles are application specific that is specific to the application known as The Web.

And we know from experience with reuse elsewhere that sometimes we can only reuse patterns because the implementations of those patterns cannot be reused for our application.

Does it not then follow that for certain applications, reusing The Web application (http etc) is inappropriate but reusing REST patterns (caching etc) might be appropriate?