  In the last years, RESTful Web services have become more and more popular as
a lightweight solution to connect remote systems in distributed and Cloud-based
architectures. However, being an architectural style rather than a
specification or standard, the proper design of RESTful Web services is not
trivial since developers have to deal with a plethora of recommendations and
best practices. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) emphasizes the use of models and
model transformations to raise the level of abstraction and semi-automate the
development of software. In this paper we present an approach that leverages on
MDE techniques to generate RESTful services. The approach, called EMF-REST,
takes EMF data models as input and generates Web APIs following the REST
principles and relying on well-known libraries and standards, thus facilitating
its comprehension and maintainability. Additionally, EMF-REST integrates model
and Web-specific features to provide model validation and security
capabilities, respectively, to the generated API. For Web developers, our
approach brings more agility to the Web development process by providing
ready-to-run-and-test Web APIs out of data models. Also, our approach provides
MDE practitioners the basis to develop Cloud-based modeling solutions as well
as enhanced collaborative support.
