RestfulBeans is a high level API for sharing objects between a server and a Java-based client. The underlying protocol is designed to expose the data consumed by a rich client to the search engines. The key properties of the protocol are compliance with the HTTP spec and REST principles, and XML representation for Java Beans with object references represented as XLink (to allow search engines to walk through the object tree). The key API property is the ability to work with remote objects as if they were local. An application using RestfulBeans is automatically capable of
supplying users with URLs for any “content item”
it deals with.