SOAP is officially dead, long live REST

I may agree that for most types of online APIs currently made available by so many SaaS and web companies, there is probably little use for the WS-* stack. However, corporate America I think will keep relying on SOAP for a long time since it's the only way (that I know of) to get distributed transactions, federated security and other enterprise type features required using web services. The WS-* stack is there for a reason and it's because big business requires it.

A comment on the page asks if there are REST libraries available. They really aren't needed in most cases. With a url lib and json/xml parser, you've got the libraries you need. It's easier to write an abstraction layer for your particular application than it is to adapt a library for your application.

I will be very happy to see SOAP go away forever. A GET/POST with a JSON or XML response is just so much easier to deal with.<p>However, the reality is that there are many enterprise tools that only work via SOAP. Standards organization or not, SOAP will be with us for a long time.