7 Difference between REST and SOAP Web Services for Experienced Java Programmers

Wondering what is the difference between REST and SOAP web services? Here is the answer of this popular Java interview question

What is the difference between REST and SOAP Web-service is a very popular question on Java Developer interviews. I have been asked this question a number of times in my career, though now it has changed bit more and people are now even asking about difference between REST and GraphQL? or difference between REST and gRPC?, we will cover those in coming article but in this article, we will learn about SOAP vs REST differences.

Here I am listing out some of the key differences between REST and SOAP purely from interview perspective i.e. I am only mentioning key points, not going into details.

Unless you are doing exclusive work in REST or SOAP Web service, interviewer will not go into deep and if you have done the work already, you probably don’t need this list.

By the way, if you are new to Spring Framework and Hibernate and want to learn Spring and Hibernate in depth and looking for resources then you can also checkout following online courses:

1. Spring Master Class — Beginner to Expert
2. Spring & Hibernate for Beginners
3. Learn Spring: The Certification Class
4. Master Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud

All of these are top rated courses to learn Spring framework in depth but if you need free resources you can also checkout these free Spring framework courses:

Difference between SOAP vs REST Web Services for Java Interviews

Here is a list of important differences between SOAP and RESTful Web Services for Java developers:

1. SOAP is a XML based message protocol while REST is an architectural style protocol.
2. SOAP uses WSDL for communication between consumer and provider, while REST uses XML or JSON to send and received data.
3. SOAP invokes services by calling RPC method while REST simply calls services using HTTP methods via URL Path.
4. SOAP Web services does not return human readable result but REST result is readable because it’s just plain XML or JSON.
5. SOAP transfer is over HTTP, but it can also use other protocols such as SMTP, FTP etc, but REST can only use HTTP as transport protocol.
6. Even though you can use SOAP with JavaScript, it’s difficult to implement as compared to REST which is very easy to use with JavaScript.
7. REST has better performance over SOAP because it is less CPU intensive and requires less resources.

Here is also a nice diagram which highlight the difference between REST and SOAP Web Services

Java and Spring Interview Preparation Material

If you are preparing for Java and Spring Developer interviews and need resources then you should check out these resources. Before any Java and Spring Developer interview, I always use to read the below resources

Grokking the Java Interview

Grokking the Java Interview: click here

I have personally bought these books to speed up my preparation.

You can get your sample copy here, check the content of it and go for it

Grokking the Java Interview [Free Sample Copy]: click here

If you want to prepare for the Spring Boot interview you follow this consolidated ebook, it also contains microservice questions from spring boot interviews.

Grokking the Spring Boot Interview

You can get your copy here — Grokking the Spring Boot Interview

These were some key difference between REST and SOAP Web Service from Java Interview perspective. If you think I have missed any key difference then feel free to add into this list. Good luck for your Java Interview.

By the way, if you are new to Spring Framework and Hibernate and want to learn Spring and Hibernate in depth and looking for resources then you can also checkout following online courses:

1. Spring Master Class — Beginner to Expert
2. Spring & Hibernate for Beginners
3. Learn Spring: The Certification Class
4. Master Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud

All of these are top rated courses to learn Spring framework in depth but if you need free resources you can also checkout these free Spring framework courses: