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Overview

The DSC Platform can be provisioned using the web-based graphical interface (Web UI), Command Line Interface (CLI), or Transaction Language 1 (TL1) commands. However, these provisioning methods are limited when configuring the DSC from another server. The REpresentational State Transfer (REST) Application Programming Interface (API) is an established technique that allows administrators and developers to script DSC interactions from other servers and/or third-party applications. 

REST API is a simple, stateless architecture style that uses HTTP protocol to perform create, read, update, and delete operations. The REST API has the following properties:

• Stateless: No client context is stored on the server. A request from the client will contain all the necessary information required to process the request.
• Client-Server model: In a client-server model, clients are associated with the user interface and the servers manage data storage behind the interface. This configuration allows a separation between the client and server.
• Cacheable: Improvement in scalability and performance when the client caches responses.
• Language-independent: REST API uses open standards. Most of the programming languages can be used to access the API. Linux/Unix distributions very often come with cURL command line tool which can be used to interact with API as well. 

REST APIs provide access to resources using Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) paths. To use a REST API, a client application makes an HTTPs requests and parses the responses. The client requests are standard HTTP methods such as GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE.

This guide covers the following topics

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