What is REST?

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RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary REST  (SearchSOA.com)

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A great source of information about REST can be found here: http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl.

REST stands for Representational State Transfer. It refers to an architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems defined by Roy Fielding in his dissertation. REST imposes a set of constraints on a system that help to ensure extreme scalability. Although REST defines a number of important architectural constraints (such as clean separation of client interface from server implementation, statelessness, and cacheability), the key distinguishing feature of REST is the requirement for a uniform interface. REST requires the use of a common, generalized, generic interface. It does not permit application-specific interfaces. In the Web world, the REST interface is defined by the HTTP interface, which supports four basic application methods: GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. (HTTP does have additional methods, but these are the basic four.) Contrast this uniform interface constraint to the service oriented architectural style (SOA), which defines a different interface (e.g., WSDL portType) for every type of service.