Integrating with REST services
Technology does not like to stand still. It keeps evolving. Nowadays, SOAP Web Services are not as frequently used as compared to the early days, especially in comparison to REST.
Over time, the XML file format became harder and harder to process. The initially simple XML specification became more complex and the entire model has proven not flexible enough. In the meantime, the much simpler JSON became the most popular format for exchanging structured data.
The REST architecture for implementing Web Services is not as standardized as SOAP. There are several data structure and Web Service interface proposals, but none of them has gained a prominent position. The beauty of REST is that it fully adopts the underlying HTTP protocol (while SOAP is protocol agnostic) and it just uses HTTP request and response headers for structural information.
In REST, there is more freedom. Inside the REST server, there are different resources identified by their...