We have already seen SOAP web services and RESTful web services in detail before. In this post, we are going to see differences between SOAP and REST web services.
SOAP vs REST web services
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Parameter
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SOAP
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REST
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|---|---|---|
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Acronym
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SOAP stands for simple object access protocol
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REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer
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Protocol vs Architectural style
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 SOAP is a standard protocol to create web services
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Rest is architectural style to create web services.
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Contract
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Client and Server are bind with WSDL contract
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There is no contract between client and Server.
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Format Support
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SOAP supports only XML format
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REST web services supports XML, json and plain text etc.
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Maintainability
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SOAP web services are hard to maintain as if we do any changes in WSDL , we need to create client stub again
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REST web services are generally easy to maintain.
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Service interfaces vs URI
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SOAP uses Service interfaces to expose business logic
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Rest uses URI to expose business logic
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Security
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SOAP has its own security : WS-security
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Rest inherits its security from underlying transport layer.
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Bandwidth
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SOAP requires more bandwidth and resources as it uses XML messages to exchange information
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REST requires less bandwith and resources. It can use JSON also.
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Learning curve
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SOAP web services are hard to learn as you need to understand WSDL , client stub
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REST web services are easy to understand as you need to annotate plain java class with JAX-RS annotations to use various HTTP methods.
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This is all about Difference between SOAP and REST web services in java. If you find more differences, please comment, so that I can include them in post.
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Perfectly laid down on the previous topics (SOAP and REST), and this blog magnificently complemented the previous topic. Thank you!
Thanks for this examples
Thanks for wonderful example