Article:		REST and the Real World
Subject:		SOAP and XML
Date:		2002-11-25 12:58:52
From:		Gary Hewitt
So let's assume the following: Given any problem, XML is the solution. SOAP seems to solve the problem in the wrong way: by using XML as a transport mechanism/envelope for other datatypes. So you can marshall datatypes, but also do things like guarantee delivery (maybe), apply security (again, maybe), etc. Seems like the elephant in the middle of the party is that XML seems far more powerful as a datatype itself ... but transmitting XML documents is ugly in SOAP. It seems graceful in REST, however, where the URI can (should?) point at an XML document. If I were trying to create interfaces to existing components (COM, J2EE classes) I think SOAP would be very attractive to shorten that process; I'm in green fields, though, and REST looks much more attractive as an approach, esp. since many of my resources are not particularly state-dependent.

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