Is RESTful faster than SOAP? and when to use one of them?

Question

Duplicate: This is a duplicate of \"What are the best uses of REST services?\" and many others. Please close it.

In web development:

Should

Answer 1

To directly answer your question, I'd say yes. REST is usually regarded as the lighter alternative. Also, at the current stage, REST is still consider/practiced by many to be more of a "direction/guideline" then a full protocol.

There's an interesting article depicting their differences in an interesting dialogue.

Personally, I'd say REST should be pretty much better than SOAP in all cases a normal person would choose. On the other hand, designing a true REST architecture requires a lot of planning and considerations. Most attempts fail at that and become STREST (mentioned in the above article), which is like mixing SOAP and REST and losing some of the benefits REST provides.