RESTful versus SOAP services
Web services are generally divided into two categories:
- RESTful services
- SOAP services
The difference between the two categories may appear confusing at first sight. However, we will try to clarify the differences.
SOAP services
SOAP is a standard communication protocol for exchanging structured messages between computer systems in the XML-based message format. It stands for Simple Object Access Protocol and defines a set of rules associated with messages being sent from one system to another, and a response message is received by this other system. Some key concepts are associated with SOAP services; WSDL (Web Services Description Language) is a standard way of defining a directory of SOAP-based services, message format, and other required information. Some
RESTful services
RESTful (Representational state transfer), on the other hand, is not another protocol for implementing web services. It's considered an architectural pattern for implementing web services. This...