What is the Difference between SOAP and REST ??

Web services that are used to communicate in-between applications that are being developed in many programming-languages and running on different platforms. Like a Java application running on linux platform can communicate with a PHP application running on windows platform. There are two types of web services, SOAP and REST. Let us discuss some main differences between them.

SOAP vs REST – Difference between SOAP and REST Web Services

S.No	SOAP	REST
1.	SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol.	REST stands for Representational State Transfer.
2.	SOAP is a protocol. It defines some standards that should be followed strictly.	REST is an architectural style. It doesn’t define so many standards like SOAP.
3.	SOAP is highly secure as it defines its own security.	REST inherits security measures from the underlying transport.
4.	SOAP message request is processed slower as compared to REST.	REST message request is processed faster as compared to SOAP.
5.	SOAP supports only XML data format.	REST supports data formats like plain text, XML, HTML, JSON, etc.
6.	SOAP is not very easy to implement so it is preferred less.	REST is easier to implement so it is preferred more.
7.	SOAP requires more bandwidth and resources.	REST requires less bandwidth and resources.
8.	In java SOAP web services are implemented using JAX-WS API.	In java RESTful web services are implemented using JAX-RS API.
9.	It does not use web caching mechanism.	It uses web caching mechanism.
10.	SOAP is commonly used in payment gateways, financial and telecommunication services.	REST is commonly used in social media, web chat and mobile services.

 

SOAP or REST?

If the security is a major concern and the resources are not limited then we should use SOAP web services. Like if we are creating a web service for banking related work then we should go with SOAP as here high security is needed.

On the other hand if security is not a major concern and we have limited resources. Or we want to create an API that will be easily used by other developers publicly then we should go with REST web services.