I know that SOAP belongs to the message protocol layer. So, does "REST" also belong in the same layer?
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1Possible duplicate of [What exactly is RESTful programming?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/671118/what-exactly-is-restful-programming) – Wicher Visser Jul 08 '16 at 07:09
1 Answers
The debate between REST and SOAP has been going on for a long time, and so there is a lot of information about it.
REST is a communication protocol. An acceptable definition can be the following:
REST stands for Representational State Transfer. (It is sometimes spelled "ReST".) It relies on a stateless, client-server, cacheable communications protocol
From elkstein.org
A more formal definition can be found in the REST Wiki article.
REST does not belong anywhere. It is a protocol (a way of doing things), mostly used with HTTP, but it can be used with anything.
The next thing that usually comes, is SOAP vs REST. And for that, I do suggest you do some reading and decide on your own which one you should use. I recommend the following articles in the given order:

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