I am working now in project as the ESB architect.
There are several service consumer and each have their own wishes and requests.
I can divide the service consumer into two:
1. SOAP consumers
2. REST/Json consumers
That raised for me an old battle between SOAP and REST enthusiasts.
Well, SOAP supporters are more main stream majority while REST supporter are enthusiasts.
I have to say something about REST, it is "natural" for web developers, using Json is lightweight compared to XML, it help the integration directly to the web page and more and more and more.
So tell me one thing: why every time I need to set security, logging, service pattern and even implementation I go to SOAP and make the REST service act like SOAP.
I will tell you why! SOAP has standards, these standards came out of best practices for integration.
REST is nice but it rely on the same best practices while no standards are found for it.
Sometime I think that SOAP vs REST is like Windows vs LINUX. Even LINUX enthusiasts will admit that the PC is a Windows domain. It is less cool to have windows but it serve all your needs.
As a developer in a large project, I prefer comfort over cool so I choose SOAP.
Noam
