What is the difference between SOAP and REST webservices? Can SOAP be RESTful?

Question

From MSDN magazine https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd315413.aspx and https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd942839.aspx I understand that

When RESTful

Answer 1

Conceptually, the services are very different.

SOAP is about remote procedure calls (RPC) which means it is designed to call methods remotely. A proxy of the server methods on the client has to stay in sync with the server. WSDL is commonly used to keep the models in sync.

SOAP also disregards a lot of HTTP features. As you mentioned, it uses POST methods for everything. It also wraps data in a proprietary XML data format.

REST uses URLs to reference resources. The resource representation can be in any format (json, xml, csv, binary,...) and can take advantage of HTTP content negotiation (Accept* headers). HTTP methods map to CRUD methods very well.

True REST services must use a data format that is hypermedia driven (HAL, JSON collection, ... or vendor custom). It provides an ability to discover links to associated resources from a single fixed URL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS

I do not see how the same service (a single contract) can meet all that criteria.