amazon: rest and soap

Hello www-tag,

Article by Tim O'Reilly makes interesting reading.

> Amazon has both SOAP and REST interfaces to their web services, and
> 85% of their usage is of the REST interface. Despite all of the
> corporate hype over the SOAP stack, this is pretty compelling
> evidence that developers like the simpler REST approach. (I know
> there are many more complex applications where SOAP is better, but
> I've always liked technologies that have low barriers to entry and
> grassroots adoption, and simple XML over HTTP approach seems to have
> that winning combination.)
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3005

from the license agreement I can confirm that they offer both
approaches:

>> Amazon.com Web Services is a platform to publish and invoke
>> applications that perform various functions, such as retrieving
>> information about Amazon.com products or adding a product to an
>> Amazon.com shopping cart, wish list, or registry. Amazon.com Web
>> Services can be accessed through two interfaces: XML over HTTP or
>> SOAP. Both of these methods return "structured data" (product name,
>> manufacturer, price, etc.) about products available at
>> www.amazon.com and www.amazon.co.uk (together, the "Amazon.com
>> Website") based on parameters such as keyword search terms and
>> browse tree nodes.
http://associates.amazon.com/exec/panama/associates/join/developer/kit.html

clearly I can't confirm what proportion of developers use which
interface, or why.

-- 
 Chris                          mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Saturday, 5 April 2003 09:15:38 UTC