One day, three oreillynet-articles on the SOAP/REST/XML-controversy:
Paul Prescod on xml.com: "In this article I demonstrate that Google's choice [of a SOAP API] was technologically poor, compared to that of eBay and Amazon [who offer XML/HTTP/URI-based API] . I will show that a Google API based on XML, HTTP and URIs can be simpler to use, more efficient, and more powerful." Meanwhile on another oreillynet-site, Clay Shirky lauds SOAP as "astonishingly far along."
So in his story, Marc Hedlund rounds this thing up and neither agrees with Paul nor Clay: "Speaking as a developer, I currently don't have any reason to care one way or another which path Google takes. Speaking as a technologist, I think the demand for REST in this case is driven more by aesthetics than practicality. Maybe it's really just anti-Microsoft. Speaking as a product manager-type, I would say Google should support the "platforms" with sufficient business demand. View SOAP as Windows and REST as Linux and XML-RPC as Mac and make decisions accordingly. Taking the three of these considerations in combination, I would say that there's no point in a business like Google investing in more than one Web services interface until there's money attached to use of the service; and all other things being equal, which they seem to be, I would bet on Microsoft (i.e. SOAP)."
If you want to learn more about REST (Representational State Transfer), check the RESTwiki (recommended) and Paul Prescods story REST and the Real World on oreillynet. Scott Andrew: "The idea behind REST is that the Web already has everything it needs to power XML-based, transactional Web services: HTTP-native actions such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. (verbs), applied to a "potentially infinite set of nouns" (URIs). As a developer, probably the most obvious benefit I see is you don't need much to get started, no crazy tools, no SOAP::Client, etc. All you need is something that can handle HTTP and parse an XML payload. In other words, you need less glue."
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