[PJUG Javamail] SOAP or REST?

[Zack Radick]

I have not worked with REST, but I have had to work with SOAP some as 
a result of both client requirements and acronym envy.  Most of this 
was back in the Apache AXIS days (running on Tomcat) and before the 
WS-I was fairly widely accepted as a best practice.  That being said, 
I would always prefer to do something other than SOAP given the 
choice.  SOAP includes it's own wrappers and service definition files 
that can be extremely confusing to the un-initiated.  It should also 
be noted that SOAP services that use "soap encoding" (against the 
WS-I recommendation) are extremely painful to work with if you have 
to intercept a real message and make any sense of it.  Ultimately I 
think it comes down to what you are comfortable with and what you can 
get other interested parties to accept.  Internally I would always 
rather use a stateless EJB as a remote service interface, but that 
may not be an option in all cases...
Cheers,
--Zack

At 03:41 PM 3/18/2009, Michael Phoenix wrote:
>Just off the top of my head it seems that I remember learning that a
>big advantage with REST is that everything needed to understand the
>message is sent in the message packet itself.
>
>On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Siraj Podikunju 
><sirajp at spconsult.com> wrote:
> > I could not make it to the meeting last night but this was the question
> > I had been hoping to get an answer to.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Richard Johnson wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> Thanks Sean for yet another wonderful presentation last night.  We
> >> didn't really discuss why one would choose a REST connection or SOAP
> >> connection when setting up services or clients, other than the obvious
> >> "because that's what's provided."  Are there distinctions that make
> >> such a discussion worthwhile?    At the risk of a religious war, I'll
> >> toss out the question.
> >>
> >> Why should I choose either SOAP or REST when setting up an
> >> architecture for services or clients?
> > --
> > Siraj Podikunju
> > SP Consulting, Inc.
> > Tel: 360-600-6608
> > Fax: 360-260-3448
> > E-Mail: sirajp at spconsult.com
> >
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