I am a .net developer but I have no or very limited understanding of SOAP, HTTP,REST. What are some of the resources for learning more about them. Specially for a .NET developer. A general search on google returns a zillion of results but the ones I looked into did not help me understand how knowledge of these would be make me a better developer. I know basics of WCF, I thought it would be a good idea to learn more about SOAP, HTTP, REST etc before diving deeper in WCF etc.
2 Answers
The most important stuff for you if you want learn web services should be HTTP protocol, soap and rest are the implementation details.
For the HTTP i would recommend this great serie of articles which i personally read. They explain the basic mechanisms and than the advanced ones of HTTP protocol. A Software Developer's Guide to HTTP
After understanding HTTP you can read about rest - basically simple web services using HTTP. What is rest
At the end i would recommend for example this for soa/soap understanding, which you may end up using in WCF. Soap
Also some comparation between soa/soap and rest can come handy. Soap vs Rest

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This MSDN WCF article seems to cover the basics of all three pretty well.
The (to me) most obvious resource: Trial and Error (mixed with searching and reading a lot here on SO). Dive right into WCF and figure out what is what on the way. (Found in a quick search: https://stackoverflow.com/a/186695/580651)
I had the best results by implementing HTTP, REST API and SOAP API clients and/or services running/setting up on servers by myself or integrating and analyzing the internals of a web service framework for a specific project where I had the need for one.
Some related topics that come to my mind (a quick shot):
- HTTP leads to Status Codes, CORS & OPTIONS preflight requests, going HTTPS only, HTTP 418 and eventually to HTTP/2
- REST often leads to JSON, CRUD operations and HTTP verbs, maturity level and Hypermedia/HATEOAS
- SOAP probably to WSDL XML
- Securing Endpoints is important in all cases.
- Tools that help forging and analyzing requests and their responses. (e.g. SoapUI or REST/SOAP client browser extensions)
- Consuming open data and building services that make the world a better place is a plus.