Abstract
There are two competing architectural styles employed for building Web services: RESTful services and services based on the WS– ∗ standards (also known as “SOAP Web services”). These two styles have separate follower bases, but many differences between them are ideological rather than factual. In order to promote the healthy growth of Web services research and practice, it is important to distinguish arguments for implementation practices over abstract concepts represented by these styles, carefully evaluating the respective advantages of RESTful and WS– ∗ Web services. Understanding these distinctions is especially critical for the development of enterprise systems, because in this domain, tool vendors have preferred WS– ∗ services to the neglect of RESTful solutions. This chapter evaluates some of the key questions regarding the real and perceived distinctions between these two styles of Web services. It analyzes how the current tools for building RESTful Web services embody the principles of REST. Finally, it presents select open research questions to further the growth of RESTful Web services.
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Notes
- 1.
GET sends data from the server to the client, in the response. POST sends the data from the client to the server, in the request. Thus, GET is used for reading, and POST for writing.
- 2.
A simple bank transaction, e.g. transferring $100 from savings to checking, involves sending four HTTP requests. First, create a resource for the transfer using POST. Next, send a PUT to the resource specifying the withdrawal of $100 from savings. Then, send a second PUT to deposit $100 to checking. Finally, send a PUT to commit the transaction. Note that the burden of verifying that each step was successful is on the client. If a step fails, the client needs to send a DELETE to the transaction resource to abort the transaction (Richardson and Ruby 2007).
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Nicholas Chen, Hakan Erdogmus, Jim Webber, and anonymous reviewers for reviewing earlier drafts of this work.
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Adamczyk, P., Smith, P.H., Johnson, R.E., Hafiz, M. (2011). REST and Web Services: In Theory and in Practice. In: Wilde, E., Pautasso, C. (eds) REST: From Research to Practice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8303-9_2
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