Issues and challenges leveraging REST architectural style in enterprise service systems

Over the past decade we have experienced a steady growth of software applications that are based on Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services. These systems rely on protocols, such as SOAP, that utilize the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) as well as messaging principles used for accessing data and invoking back-end applications. However, a number of researchers and practitioners have criticized the Service Oriented Architecture paradigm as too complex and rigid. Instead, they have proposed an alternative architectural style called REST for accessing services and data through a collection of URIs, which uniquely identify and denote services and data as "resources" over the Web. The result is that client applications can use light-weight HTTP requests to obtain access and manipulate such "resources".