SOAP Vs REST
Below are the some main difference between SOAP Vs REST.
| SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol | REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer. |
| SOAP is a XML based messaging protocol | REST is an architectural style. REST does not enforces message format as XML etc |
| SOAP is a simple XML-based protocol to let applications exchange information over HTTP. | REST facilitates the transaction between web servers by allowing loose coupling between different services. RESTful applications use HTTP requests to post data (create and/or update), read data (e.g., make queries), and delete data. |
| Easy to consume – sometimes Rigid, adheres to a contract, Development tools required for consuming web services | Lightweight – not a lot of extra xml markup. Human Readable Results. Easy to build – no toolkits required |
| SOAP has specifications for stateful implementation as well. | REST follows stateless model |
| SOAP-based web service is protocol specific | REST is just the guideline. |
| SOAP uses interfaces and named operations to expose business logic. | REST uses (generally) URI and methods like (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE) to expose resources. |
| SOAP has a set of standard specifications. WS-Security is the specification for security in the implementation. It is a detailed standard providing rules for security in application implementation. Like this we have separate specifications for messaging, transactions, etc. | Unlike SOAP, REST does not has dedicated concepts for each of these. REST predominantly relies on HTTPS. |
| SOAP invokes services by calling RPC method. | REST just simply calls services via URL path |
| SOAP is most appropriately used for large enterprise applications rather than smaller, more mobile applications | REST is most appropriately used for smaller, more mobile applications, rather than large, enterprise applications |
| For using a SOAP based web service, client needs to create the proxy for the web service (stub) and then invoke the method on the proxy | while REST client can just use the URI for a web service, and invoke the service by using HTTP GET on the URI. |
| Focused on accessing named operations, each of which typically implements some logic. Different applications expose different interfaces |
Focused on accessing named resources, each of which typically represents some data. Every application exposes its resources through the same interface |
| Scalability: SOAP – No automated caching possible HTTP POST used for tunneling all requests |
Scalability: Leverages Internet intermediary caching (HTTP Proxies) Uniform interface, Idempotent methods |
| Security: WS-Security, WS-SecureConversation OASIS Standards, Interoperable |
Security: Only possible at application level No Standards, Limited interoperability |
| Google seams to be consistent in implementing their web services to use SOAP, with the exception of Blogger, which uses XML-RPC. | All of Yahoo’s web services use REST, including Flickr and both eBay & Amazon have web services for both REST and SOAP |
| if the project requires a high level of security and a large amount of data exchange, then SOAP is the appropriate choice | If there are resource constraints and if there is a need that the code should be written faster, then REST is better. |
