Web Services types

Compare the two Web Services types

Criteria	SOAP	RESTful	Comments
Specification	JAX-WS	JAX-RS
Orientation	Wraps business logic	Accesses resources/data
Developer View	Object oriented	Resource Oriented
Language Independence	Yes	Yes
Platform Independence	Yes	Yes
Simplicity	No	Yes
Standards Based	Yes	No	SOAP web services are based on SOAP and WS-* specifications
Security	SSL, WS-Security	SSL	WS-Security provides end-to-end security covering message integrity and authentication
Transactions	WS-AtomicTransaction	No
Reliability	WS-ReliableMessaging	Application specific
Performance	Good	Better	Caching and lower message payload makes RESTful web services performance efficient and scalable
Caching	No	GET operations can be cached
Transport protocol support	HTTP, SMTP, JMS	HTTP	Multiple transport protocol support makes SOAP Web Services flexible
Message Size	Heavy, has SOAP and WS-* specific markup	Lightweight, no extra xml markup
Message Communication protocol	XML	XML, JSON, other valid MIME type	This flexibility of REST makes its extremely useful in providing consumer need specific message payloads
Message Encoding	Yes	No	SOAP Web Services support text and binary encoding, RESTful encoding is limited to text
Service Description	WSDL	No formal contract definition	In REST, no formal way to describe a service interface means more dependence on written documentation
Human intelligible Payload	No	Yes
Developer Tooling	Yes	Minimal or none	Complexity of SOAP Web Services dictates the need for using frameworks to facilitate rapid application development. REST on the other hand due to its simplicity can be developed without any framework
Attachment Support	via SAAJ specification	RESTful WS implementation specific support

      Compare Webservice Types

      Creating Web Service Example-1

      Creating Web Service Example-2

      Creating Web Service Example-3