There are two major players when it comes to web services: SOAP, the tried and true architecture, and SOAP’s trendy new brother, REST. Both web services use their own architectures that have different advantages and disadvantages, and you’ll find various schools of thought on which one is better.

In this blog, we take a quick look at SOAP and REST, examine the advantages and disadvantages, and discuss when it is most appropriate to use either.

When to use SOAP

SOAP is most appropriately used for large enterprise applications rather than smaller, more mobile applications. SOAP architecture is most useful when a formal contract must be established to describe the interface that the web service offers, such as details regarding messages, operations, bindings, and the location of the web service. Therefore, SOAP should be used when more capability is needed. For example, including up-to-date stock prices to subscribing websites is a good time to use SOAP since a greater amount of program interaction between client and server is required than REST can provide.

When to use REST

REST is implemented most easily using ASP.NET web API in MVC 4.0. REST is most appropriately used for smaller, more mobile applications, rather than large, enterprise applications. This is because REST is best used as a means of publishing information, components, and processes to make them more accessible to other users and machine processes. An online publisher could use REST to make syndicated content available by periodically preparing and activating a web page that included content and XML statements that described the content.

Overall, if the project requires a high level of security and a large amount of data exchange, then SOAP is the appropriate choice. But if there are resource constraints and you need the code to be written faster, then REST is better. Ultimately it depends on the project and the circumstances which architecture fits best.

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