Enough already... I need some REST

Like many others, inspired by Pete Lacey's S Stands for Simple, late last year I began to look into REST and by extension into HTTP, status codes, web caching, et al. In a nutshell I went back to the basics and discovered the wealth that I had turned a blind eye to what with the latest and greatest frameworks "abstracting out" what constitutes the web from me.

Suddenly the stateless nature of HTTP transformed from being a limitation to a virtue. The status codes weren't just numbers but a means of communication (in some cases even the lack of it - 304, anyone?). Caching wasn't something I needed to build but something I needed to learn how to use (ETag, If-None-Match, Cache control headers, what not). Ditto with security. URLs ceased being just names - they are a language.

It took all of that for me to realize that it's not the next WS* standard that will help me develop the next state-of-the-art web service but it's the existing goodness in HTTP, it's what makes the web work today, it's what brought you to this page and what enabled me to publish this page to the world.

Having relatively recently discovered REST I find it simple and natural. Simple is good. Natural is good. It uses the existing web / HTTP infrastructure not merely as a protocol but as a platform. And it fits into this Web 2.0 thingy to a tee: Issue AJAX requests(Actually it's more like AJAX without the X). Receive JSON responses. There's your secret sauce to building mashups.

This is not to say that I suddenly shunt everything that is SOAP and just do REST all the way. Far from it. SOAP has served me very well and I like it and I'll continue to use it. Something that lets me use pure Java / .NET while working with a piece of software half a world away from me is too precious to be ignored.

I believe that SOAP and REST are not contradictory but complementary. They have their own usages and users and they will coexist. And I'll continue to use them both as per my application needs. Horses for courses

I rest my case.