What is SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

This chapter aims to present a general overview of today's dominant software architectural style for developing web services, namely REST, by comparing the core elements of this paradigm with the big web service model. The study evaluates the HTTP requests, responses, and thus, the SOAP/JSON payloads involved in consuming a big web service and a RESTful service that is developed in the ASP.NET Core Web API framework. After summarizing the REST constraints, the chapter elucidates how the example RESTful web service satisfies these constraints and lists some scenarios suited to each paradigm. The study notes the object-oriented elements that are inherent in RESTful services, specifically how polymorphism and abstraction principles can be applied to RESTful services.