Why prefer REST over SOAP?

Question

If I need a web service to pass back and forth a complex object, is there a reason I should prefer SOAP over REST? Here is an example of the possible SOAP message:

Answer 1

I view SOAP and REST as orthogonal APIs, designed to do different things.

SOAP is basically a fancy RPC, so if you want to send a computation request over to the server and get the result back, you use SOAP. If it would be local, it would be a method call to an object instance.

REST is a way to create, retrieve, update and delete remote objects, not in the sense of POO, using a uniform API. If it would be local, it would be like working with a file.

So they actually respond to different needs. You can bastardize one to do the work of the other, but you mangle the meanings.