Comparison between REST and SOAP with HTTP

1. Overview

Let's analyze SOAP and Rest with protocols.

 

2.  Comparison between SOAP and REST

	SOAP	REST
History	SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol) was created in 1998 by Dave Winer, Don Box, Bob Atkinson and Mohsen AIGhosein in collaboration with Microsoft	REST(Representational State Transfer) was Created in 2000 by Roy Thomas Fielding. Developed in an academic environment, this protocol embraces the philosophy of the open Web
Concept	SOAP makes data available as services, E.g: getUserInfoamtion, getPayments, getBook, setCostomer	REST makes data available as resources, E.g: user, payments
Services	Back-end Services	Front-end Services
Media Type	SOAP, WS-*	JSON, XML, form-UML-encoded, custom
Transports	HTTP, TCP, UDP, Queues, Web Sockets, custom	HTTP only
Message Patterns	Request-reply, one-way, duplex	Request-reply only
Cache	SOAP-based reads cannot be cached	REST-based reads can be cached. Performs and scales better
Pros	SOAP follows a formal enterprise approach Works on top of any communication protocol, even asynchronously Information about objects is communicated to clients Security and authorization are part of the protocol Can be fully described using Web Service Definition Language (WSDL)	REST uses HTTP Verbs such as: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE Relatively easy to implement and maintain Clearly separates client and server implementations Communication not controlled by a single entity Information can be stored by the client to prevent multiple calls Can return data in multiple formats(HTML, JSON, XML, Plain text, PDF, etc.) Can be consumed by any client, even a web browser with Ajax and javascript
Cons	SOAP consume a lot of bandwidth communicating metadata Tack much effort to implement and is not good for integrating between Web and mobile developers Support the Only XML	REST works on top of the HTTP protocol Less authorization and security
Security	Support both SSL security and WS-security, which adds some enterprise security features. Supports identity through intermediaries, not just point to point SSL.	Supports only point-to-point SSL security
ACID	Having comprehensive support for both ACID based transaction management for short-lived transactions and compensation based transaction management for long-running transactions. It also supports two-phase commit across distributed resources.	REST supports transactions, but it is neither ACID compliant nor can provide two-phase commit across distributed transactional resources as it is limited by its HTTP protocol.
Used When	SOAP used when clients need to have access to objects available on servers When you want a formal contract between client and server When you need asynchronous processing and invocation	REST used when clients and servers are both on a Web environment When information about objects are independent to the client
Do not use When	Do not use SOAP when you want a API that easy to use When your bandwidth is very limited	Do not use REST when you need a strict contract between client and server When performing transactions that involve multiple calls
Commonly use for	SOAP used for Financial services Payment gateways Telecommunication services	REST used for Social Media services Mobile Services Social Networks
Real Example	Salesforce SOAP API Paypal SOAP API Clickatell SMS SOAP API	Twitter REST API LinkedIn REST API Slack REST API

• Processing

• Architecture

• Transmission verification Architecture

 

3. References

https://searchapparchitecture.techtarget.com/definition/RESTful-API

https://searchapparchitecture.techtarget.com/definition/REST-REpresentational-State-Transfer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP

https://liulyndon.blogspot.com/2017/08/mvc-rest-api-vs-soap-web-services.html