[PJUG Javamail] SOAP or REST?

[Bill Jackson]

Yes, absolutely.  (I have never used these words before, but please remember
this is my opinion and not necessarily my employer's.)  REST is
self-contained, dead simple to use, and its descriptive URLs are a thing of
beauty; IMHO, it is a no-brainer in cases where the complexity and overhead
of SOAP make no sense.

For example, I created an iPhone client for
Shizzow<http://www.shizzow.com/>using their REST API, which returns
data in JSON, and it took me very little
effort to build the data management (essentially URL-building and
connection-handling) and model classes.  Then I found an Objective-C library
that parses JSON strings into dictionaries, which made the latter even
easier.

By the way, like I mentioned last night: if anyone wants to beta-test my
app, send me your iPhone's UDID.  :)  If you have your own iPhone developer
certificate and want to build / hack on it yourself, let me know and I'll
provide my github project URL.

As for Siraj's original question, I wish I could answer it, but the best
recommendation I can make is to get to know both, then make the decision
based on your comfort level and the complexity and requirements of the
application (e.g. you're probably not going to get WS-* with REST).

Cheers,
-Bill


On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Michael Phoenix <
michaelandrewphoenix at gmail.com> 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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