XML is a great format for exchanging information because it balances readability, extensibility, and compatibility across heterogeneous environments. However, its flexibility is also a disadvantage because it is far too easy to create a proprietary XML schema, resulting in lots of custom code to interface with various systems. Lots of custom code leads to brittleness, and brittleness leads to frustration. The key to salvation lies in standardization.

Enter the Atom standard: a standards-track schema that defines a generic collection/item container format in XML. Most people equate Atom to an RSS competitor, which is true, but that only covers half of what it does. The Atom Publishing Protocol is a well-defined protocol for performing CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on items over HTTP. The Atom Syndication Format, which is the most commonly used portion, defines the XML schema used to deliver data during a Read operation. Atom was spearheaded by Sam Ruby, and is now back by people like Brad Fitzpatrick, Tim Bray, Jeremy Zawodny, Mark Pilgrim, and is heavily implemented by Google.

Splunk 3.2 is available for download! This release is one of our biggest so far, representing a tremendous amount of effort by our engineering team, and is a product that I’m proud to stand behind. As I mentioned in my last post about our push for the Splunk Platform, a central tenet is to make a compelling product that developers will not only understand, but also enjoy using. While Dr. LogLogic rambles on about how catering to developers sucks, we know that developers are a huge part of our user base (drop by the #splunk channel on EFNet sometime) and we will continue to make Splunk as flexible and extensible as possible.

With 3.2, we have begun moving some of Splunk’s core services over to a proper REST API. Now, for those of you who have already been using the REST API in 3.1, the new API in 3.2 and beyond is distinctly different, and is intended to replace any older versions. Therefore, the REST API of version 3.1 and before will now be referred to as the UI API, and the term “REST API” will refer to the new API that I’m covering in this post.