REST
From AMWA
Representational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term was introduced in the doctoral dissertation on the web written in 2000 by Roy Fielding, one of the principal authors of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specification, and has come into widespread use in the networking community.
REST strictly refers to a collection of network architecture principles that outline how resources are defined and addressed. The term is often used in a looser sense to describe any simple interface that transmits domain-specific data over HTTP without an additional messaging layer such as SOAP or session tracking via HTTP cookies. These two meanings can conflict as well as overlap. It is possible to design any large software system in accordance with Fielding's REST architectural style without using the HTTP protocol and without interacting with the World Wide Web. It is also possible to design simple XML+HTTP interfaces that do not conform to REST principles, and instead follow a Remote Procedure Call model.
