RESTful API vs Web Service API

Question

I am looking at doing a small web application for learning purposes, using .NET. My conundrum is whether I should be exposing application logic to other sites and applications via a REST API, or a set of Web Services.

I am familiar with web services, but have not worked with REST. I understand the concepts of REST, I just have no practical experience with it.

Why would I use REST instead of web services for this scenario? Or not? What the issues that I should be mindful of when designing a REST API, particularly with .NET?

This should really be closed as a duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/90451/why-would-one-use-rest-instead-of-web-services or one of the others. — John Saunders, Jul 16 '09 at 03:18
possible duplicate of [SOAP or REST](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/76595/soap-or-rest) — Robert MacLean, Aug 23 '10 at 11:56

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

7

Has been asked many times, e.g.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

Community

1
1

answered Jul 15 '09 at 09:18

VolkerK

95,432
20
163
226

1

Great; these did not pop up when I entered my question title. I shall check them out. – Rhys Jones Jul 15 '09 at 09:21

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 15 '09 at 09:23

.NET offers frameworks for both cases - Windows Communication Foundation for web services and ADO.NET Data Services for a REST API.

Both technologies are equaly powerful, but personaly I think a REST API is a smarter, cleaner solution. It ís somewhat more lightweight.

Further ADO.NET Data Services has the advantage that is very easy to get data from the database to the front end - even complete object graphs. A big win if you design a datacentric application.

RESTful API vs Web Service API

2 Answers2