what is RESTful/REST

Question

i am just confused with the two can anybody please provide/explain me brief with an example?

Answer 1

REST is an style of software architecture for distributed software

Conforming to the REST constraints is referred to as being ‘RESTful’.

Very used today to build web services as an alternative to SOAP.

Here you have some links to check

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/297424/Representational_State_Transfer_REST_
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-restful/

Answer 2

An Overview
A simple example

Answer 3

How I explained REST to my wife is a good explanation.

Answer 4

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term Representational State Transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding1[2] in his doctoral dissertation. Fielding is one of the principal authors of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specification versions 1.0 and 1.1. Conforming to the REST constraints is referred to as being ‘RESTful’. Source:Wikipedia

Answer 5

Check out this Channel 9 tutor about REST and Restful service http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL35/

Answer 6

Web services are essentially web sites whose content is consumed by computer programs, not people. REST is a set of architectural principles that stipulate that web services should maximally leverage HTTP and other web standards, so that programs gain all the good stuff that people already can get out of the web. REST is often contrasted with SOAP web services, and other "remote procedure call" oriented web services.

Stefan Tilkov's presentations on REST at Parleys.com are quite good, especially this one.

For a book, you can't get any better than Richardson and Ruby's Restful Web Services.