Representational State Transfer (REST)

An architecture for web standards, especially for the HTTP protocol. It is supposed to simplify the design of network applications compared to, for example, SOAP.

REST is a simple, stateless architecture generally running over HTTP by reading a Web page that contains a XML file. REST gives a coordinated set of constraints to the design of components in a distributed hypermedia system that can lead to a higher-performing and more maintainable architecture.