S3 Amazon C# (SOAP vs REST)

Question

If you were to create a professional application using S3 services, would you use their SOAP or REST interface (and why)? Assume using C# 3.5, VS2008, etc. (basically MS stack).

Thank you ahead of time for your response(s).

-Jessy Houle

Answer 1

I would use REST because it doesn't contain the additional XML markup that's sent with SOAP which means that it is more lightweight in comparison. REST is also used by most newer and/or larger web services (see Yahoo, entirely REST based). Another positive point on REST is that you use the 4 HTTP Verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to manage URL representative entities which makes - in my opinion - the code and operations clearer.

Answer 2

SOAP has problems with larger data sizes. There are workarounds, but they are clunky and inconvenient. This alone gets my vote for REST.