title: What is the difference between SOAP and REST webservices? Can SOAP be RESTful?
body: <p>From MSDN magazine <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd315413.aspx">https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd315413.aspx</a> and <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd942839.aspx">https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd942839.aspx</a>
  I understand that</p>
  
  <p>When RESTful endpoints are asked for data using HTTP, the HTTP verb used is GET. </p>
  
  <p>Using REST means that you can take advantage of HTTP caching and other features, like Conditional GET, that aid in scaling services. Many of these techniques can't be used with SOAP because SOAP uses POST only over HTTP.</p>
  
  <p>From the Wikipedia page <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer</a></p>
  
  <p>RESTful systems typically, but not always, communicate over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with the same HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) used by web browsers to retrieve web pages and send data to remote servers.[</p>
  
  <p>But <strong>will it be a violation of REST architecture to use HTTP POST to get data from a resource</strong>? 
  In other words, can a SOAP based webservice be RESTful?</p>
  
  <p>Are there any other differences between RESTful and SOAP based webservice?</p>