SOAP vs REST
Source – http://spf13.com/post/soap-vs-rest
SOAP vs REST – the right web service
Source – http://geeknizer.com/rest-vs-soap-using-http-choosing-the-right-webservice-protocol/
JSON or SOAP XML
Source – http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1237649/json-or-soap-xml
REST with JSON vs SOAP with XML
Source – http://www.slideshare.net/kaniskamandal/rest-with-json-vs-soap-with-xml
Goodbye SOAP – Welcome JSON REST
Source – http://www.skill-guru.com/blog/2010/11/02/goodbye-soap-welcome-json-rest/
Introduction to REST
Source – http://www.restlet.org/about/introduction
Learn REST: A Tutorial
Source – http://rest.elkstein.org/2008/02/what-is-rest.html
Source – http://www.json.org/
REST-JSON is a lot smaller and less bloated than SOAP-XML therefore you will be passing much less data over the network, which is particularly important for mobile devices.
REST-JSON is also easier to parse the data so therefore easier to extract and convert the data, so therefore requires much less from the CPU from the client.
REST-JSON provides improved response times and server loading due to support from caching
REST-JSON interfaces are much easier to design and implement.
For these reasons REST-JSON is generally preferred to SOAP-XML for mobile application which require a web service to retrieve data from a web service, where there is no need to the heavy-weight XML structure.
SOAP-XML is generally preferred when:
Due to the strict nature of SOAP-XML any changes in the server code needs to be implemented on any and all clients.