Should the web service allow the user to create and update, or just save?

Question

When developing a web service that will allow the service consumer to store and retrieve a complex data type (say, Foo), should the service call the Create (Foo) service and update (Foo) service, or should the service be just called the Save (Foo) service? If Save (Foo) is better, should the user predict whether the system will create or update (based on the contents of Foo), or should the system simply create or update based on whether Foo exists or not?

Suppose we want a simple interface and don’t want to confuse the consumer with several ways of doing something, but we also want unforeseen results.

I see the pros and cons of each, but before I bias my answer, what do you think?

Finally, are there any articles on this?

(search engine help: create versus save, update or save, create / update compared to save)

Answer 1

It totally depends on how you want to design it. One of the best / most successful web service APIs I've used is the one published by Salesforce.com. They have 3 service calls:

• create () - always creates new objects
• update() - . ID, . , .
• upsert(). , . "ExternalId", . , upsert() " " , "[e-mail]", Salesforce . , , .

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http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/index_Left.htm#StartTopic=Content/sforce_api_calls_list.htm

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