Difference between REST and SOAP
| 
# | 
SOAP | 
REST | 
| 
1. | 
XML
  based message protocol | 
Architectural
  style Protocol | 
| 
2. | 
Uses
  WSDL for Communication | 
Uses
  XML or JSON | 
| 
3. | 
Transport
  Independent 
***Since SOAP messages are wrapped inside a SOAP envelop it can
  be sent over to any transport mechanism e.g. TCP, FTP, SMTP or any other
  protocol | 
Transport
  Dependent 
***RESTful web services are heavily dependent upon HTTP
  protocol. | 
| 
4. | 
SOAP web service can return response with only XML | 
RESTful web service can return response in various format e.g.
  JSON, XML and HTML | 
| 
5. | 
Difficult
  to call from Javascript | 
Easy
  to call from JavaScript | 
| 
6. | 
SOAP messages consumes more bandwidth | 
Rest
  consumes less bandwidth 
*** Because RESTFul services utilizes HTTP header. | 
| 
7. | 
SOAP web services totally ignore web caching mechanism. | 
RESTful web service take full advantage of web caching mechanism
  because they are basically URL based | 
| 
8. | 
Security in SOAP based web services need additional
  infrastructure in web to enable message or transport level security concerns.  | 
Security in RESTful web service can be implemented using
  standard and traditional solutions for authorised access to certain web
  resources | 
| 
9. | 
SOAP Stands for Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). | 
REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer (REST) | 
***Jain
