...
This article takes you through some of basic concepts about RESTful Web Services.
...
...
What is REST?
The acronym REST stands for Representational State Transfer, which basically means that each unique URI is a representation of some object and an action executed upon it.
...
URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) is used throughout this tutorial. If it makes you feel better, cross it out and use URL instead.
...
In the Web services world, Representational State Transfer (REST) is a key design idiom that embraces a stateless client-server architecture in which the Web services are viewed as resources and can be identified by their URIs. Web service clients that want to use these resources can get a content of using HTTP GET, modify the content using HTTP POST or HTTP UPDATE or delete the resource using HTTP DELETE.
...
...
REST is not a standard. You will not see the W3C putting out a REST specification. Because REST is just an architectural style. You can design your Web services in that style by understanding it.
...
RESTful Web services
Systems which follow REST principles are often referred to as RESTful. RESTful Web services is one among them and simplifies the development of Web services when compared to SOAP Web Services. Today, the Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) provides basic support for building and deploying RESTful Web services. However, the upcoming Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) specification will provide the full support for RESTful Web Services for the Java platform.
...
As firewalls don't understand the meaning of SOAP messages, they never let those messages pass whereas REST messages don't have this problem because they only use what is specified in HTTP standard.
...
Many other companies admire REST Services and the list will be pretty big if each and every company were listed.
...
...
If you want to know when to use REST services and when to use SOAP ones, you can refer to the following link for a better understanding http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/WebServices/restful/
...
Future
RESTful Web Services have recently been introduced when compared to SOAP Web services which are sufficiently well established. In addition, the future holds the possibility of describing RESTful Web services for tools to consume, which will further simplify the developer's experience.