REST web services

Representational State Transfer (popularly known as REST) is a popular architectural
style of building web services. It doesn’t depend on a SOAP envelope, but it
does leverage XML and the HTTP protocol. Statistics revealed by large web-based
companies like Amazon and Yahoo! shows that a majority of their consumers use a
REST interface.
Unfortunately, Java EE 5 doesn’t require support for REST web services and each
vendor supports its own approach. GlassFish supports RESTful web services by creating
an implementation of the javax.ws.Provider interface. Vendors such as
Oracle allow you to convert a Java object into a web service by using proprietary configuration
or a proprietary annotation. Check your vendor’s documentation to see if
they provide REST support, and see how that support is implemented. For more
information on REST, hop over to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_
State_Transfer.