SOAP vs REST Web Services

SOAP and REST can't be compared directly, since the first is a protocol (or at least tries to be) and the second is an architectural style.
REST is protocol independent. It's not coupled to HTTP.
REST might not be restricted to XML, to do it correctly with any other format you'll have to design and standardize some format for your links. Hyperlinks are standard in XML, but not in JSON. There are draft standards for JSON,



There are many differences between SOAP and REST web services. The important 10 differences between SOAP and REST are given below:

No.	SOAP	REST
1	SOAP is a protocol.	REST is an Architectural Style.
2	SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol.	REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer.
3	SOAP can't use REST because it is a protocol.	REST can use SOAP web services because it is a concept and can use any protocol like HTTP, SOAP.
4	SOAP uses services interfaces to expose the business logic.	REST uses URI to expose business logic.
5	JAX-WS is the java API for SOAP web services.	JAX-RS is the java API for RESTful web services.
6	SOAP defines standards to be strictly followed.	REST does not define too much standards like SOAP.
7	SOAP requires more bandwidth and resource than REST.	REST requires less bandwidth and resource than SOAP.
8	SOAP defines its own security.	RESTful web services inherits security measures from the underlying transport.
9	SOAP permits XML data format only.	REST permits different data format such as Plain text, HTML, XML, JSON etc.
10	SOAP is less preferred than REST.	REST more preferred than SOAP.

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