SOAP vs REST

Difference between SOAP and REST.

Sr.No	SOAP	REST
1	Simple Object Access Protocol	Representational State Transfer Protocol
2	SOAP is a more rigid set of messaging patterns than REST	REST as an architecture style does not require processing and naturally more flexible
3	SOAP relies exclusively on XML to provide messaging services	Instead of using XML to make a request, REST relies on a simple URL in many cases. It provides many different data formats.
4	Language, platform and transport independent	REST requires use of HTTP
5	Works well in distributed enterprise environments	REST assumes direct point-to-point communication
6	Standardized	Not Standardized
7	Provides built in error handling	No built in error handling
8	Automation when used with certain language products	No automation
9	Expensive tools are required to use with the Web Service	No need of expensive tools
10	Bigger learning curve	Smaller learning curve
11	SOAP doesn’t support JSON	REST allows better support for browser clients due to it’s support for JSON
12	Performance and scalability not as good as REST in few cases	Better performance and scalability
13	SOAP supports WS-Security	REST does not support WS-security
14	If we need ACID transactions over a service we need to use SOAP	While REST supports transactions, it isn’t as comprehensive and isn’t ACID compliant.
15	SOAP has successful/retry logic built in and provides end-to-end reliability even through SOAP intermediaries	REST doesn’t have a standard messaging system and expects clients to deal with communication failures by retrying