The idea behind RESTful services is the ability to expose methods and data to any consumer capable of making an HTTP connection. It differs from SOAP by reducing the complexity of the communication using a few basic HTTP verbs. The net result is that you can write applications on a web server, smart phone, tablet, computer, etc. all of which may communicate with a single HTTP RESTful service.
REST services have been around for years and continue to grow in popularity. More recently Microsoft has embraced RESTful services by first incorporating it into WCF, and later splitting them off into Web API to optimize the process of writing code.
I have come to appreciate WebAPI in that the Libraries allow self-hosting as a windows service. This means you can install and run them from a Windows machine without installing IIS. You can host them on IIS as well, but that is not necessary.
I’m curious how much you have been exposed to RESTful services? Are you embracing the simplicity? Are you taking advantage of the stateless capabilities? Are there specific clients you use, or find lend themselves to this architecture.
Share your experience by joining the conversation here, or drop an email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben