Earlier JADE releases supported only the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and WSDL‑based Web services.
JADE now implements the Representational State Transfer (REST) stateless architecture style as a simpler alternative to SOAP Web services. Mainstream Web 2.0 service providers such as Google, Salesforce, and Facebook have endorsed this easier‑to‑use, resource‑oriented model to expose their services. REST-based Web services, implemented using HTTP, offer a light‑weight alternative to the Web services available in earlier releases.
REST works with resources that are identified with a uniform resource identifier (URI). A resource represents a static or dynamically‑generated Web page. REST resources are named with nouns as part of the URI rather than verbs; for example, /customers rather than /getCustomers.
To use REST services, a client sends an HTTP request using the GET, POST, PUT, or DELETE verb.
The traditional HTTP error messages (for example, 200 ‑ OK and 404 ‑ Not found) can be used to indicate whether a request is successful. If a request is successful, information can be returned in Extensible Markup Language (XML) or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.
Session handling is not performed, so there is no timeout of connections. Additionally, information is not retained between requests from a client. If that was required, it would need to be provided by the application developer.
For details, see