Testing RESTful APIs using soapUI

You may be wondering why I introduced a new term "API" instead of "services" to start off the topic. Be it REST or SOAP, web services can be considered as another form of APIs. With the widespread adoption of mobile devices and service-oriented computing, business organizations have begun to expose applications and services to external parties. These third party developers have built applications to integrate with the systems of API providers allowing the providers to extend the capabilities of their businesses as well as helping the third party developers to earn their own livelihood.

Today, there are enormous applications built by the third party developers based on the APIs exposed by many vendors. For example, big names such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon expose their key features as APIs to the outside world allowing developers to build various applications.

Due to the easy-usage and lightweight nature of REST, most of those popular APIs are...