Sam Ruby, sounding like a cross between Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift, makes a priceless comparison on the rest-discuss list:
It is a bit ironic that a set of architectural practices under the title of "Representation State Transfer" defines virtually nothing about the way in which state is to be represented, and instead focuses on how Objects (or more precisely, resources) are to be accessed.
Similarly, I find it a bit ironic that a protocol originally created as an acronym for Simple Object Access Protocol specifies nothing about how an object is to be accessed, but instead focuses pretty much exclusively on how messages are to be represented.
He concludes:
It is my hope that some day a paper can be jointly authored which shows both SOAP and REST in a positive light, shows the strengths of both, and how they can be used in concert.
Amen.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/05/19.html#a252