As the article points out, instead of simply providing an HTML interface for human readers, the site's maintainers decided to make information available via XML as well so that other jurisdictions (such as provinces and cities) could include the same seniors' information in their web sites as computer to computer linkage. And this represents the fundamental architectural revolution of web services - the linking of information (and other processes) as computer to
computer communication, rather than linking HTML interface for humans. Some excerpts from the article. Thanks to Darcy Quesnel for this pointer-- BSA]

http://www.megginson.com/blogs/quoderat/archives/2005/03/09/public-rest-appl
ication-seniors-canada-online/

Big, public REST application: Seniors Canada Online

Yesterday I found out about a major government XML+HTTP (i.e. REST) web application that has been open to the general public since October 2004 but was never formally announced - I'm posting about it here with permission
from the federal department that's hosting it.

The Seniors Canada Online web site is designed to provide amalgamated information for senior citizens from all levels of government - currently it contains seniors' information from the Canadian federal government, the
provincial and territorial governments, and the city of Brockville, but more municipalities and NGOs will likely be joining in the future. Instead of simply providing an HTML interface for human readers, however, the site's maintainers decided to make information available via XML as well so that other jurisdictions (such as provinces and cities) could include the same seniors' information in their web sites. In fact, since it's wide open, anyone can experiment with using the XML data.

According to the developer, the implementation was trivial - the REST application shares its database and application logic with the HTML web site, so the XML part is just a thin view written on top of all that, running in parallel with the HTML view.