REST also shows up in other places. For example, JavaBeans can be described as using a REST
protocol. Also, the ATOM publishing protocol is considered to be ???RESTful??? in design.
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It can be argued that the right way to do SOA would be to use REST interfaces between small, focused
applications. This would make it easier to have the different services communicate among one another, doing
away with high-ceremony angle brackets. It also makes it easier for external clients, because they can
choose which parts of the services they are interested in, and don??™t need to concern themselves with other
resources or operations. It allows services to be more focused on the business logic while retaining (and
improving) the flexibility of web services.
Summary
In this chapter we??™ve seen several ways to use web services. Since their introduction many
years back, they??™ve resurfaced all over the place, and they??™re now an integral part of many
applications on the Web. Even though some of the current services are converted to a REST
style, many parts of the infrastructure will still depend on SOAP, WSDL, WS-I, and other
protocols that are cumbersome to use and hard to implement.
In those circumstances it makes sense to use the best implementation you can find, to
avoid more trouble than necessary. We??™ve seen that SOAP4R leaves something to be desired,
instead of being counted among the better implementations.
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