[rest] What is the different between RESTful and RESTless

What is basic difference between restful and restless, i've been reading a few articles people seem to use them interchangeably.

'RESTless' is a term not often used.

You can define 'RESTless' as any system that is not RESTful. For that it is enough to not have one characteristic that is required for a RESTful system.

Most systems are RESTless by this definition because they don't implement HATEOAS.

Any model which don't identify resource and the action associated with is restless. restless is not any term but a slang term to represent all other services that doesn't abide with the above definition. In restful model resource is identified by URL (NOUN) and the actions(VERBS) by the predefined methods in HTTP protocols i.e. GET, POST, PUT, DELETE etc.

Here are summarized the key differences between RESTful and RESTless web services:

1. Protocol

• RESTful services use REST architectural style,
• RESTless services use SOAP protocol.

2. Business logic / Functionality

• RESTful services use URL to expose business logic,
• RESTless services use the service interface to expose business logic.

3. Security

• RESTful inherits security from the underlying transport protocols,
• RESTless defines its own security layer, thus it is considered as more secure.

4. Data format

• RESTful supports various data formats such as HTML, JSON, text, etc,
• RESTless supports XML format.

5. Flexibility

• RESTful is easier and flexible,
• RESTless is not as easy and flexible.

6. Bandwidth

• RESTful services consume less bandwidth and resource,
• RESTless services consume more bandwidth and resources.