As Ryan has already pointed out, Yahoo’s looked at both REST and SOAP and decided, with no equivocation, that for the time being REST is the answer for their needs and their developer community. Just for the record, I do not believe that SOAP is evil or should be shunned; I think the simplest way of putting is that it’s not that I disbelieve in SOAP, it’s that I believe in REST. And apparently, so does Yahoo. Check out these bits from the FAQ:
Q: Why is Yahoo! using REST?
Our goal is to make Yahoo! Search Web Services available to as many developers as possible. REST based services are easy to understand and accessible from most modern programming languages. In fact, you can get a fair amount done with only a browser and your favorite scripting language.
Q: Does Yahoo! plan to support SOAP?
Not at this time. We may provide SOAP interfaces in the future, if there is significant demand. We believe REST has a lower barrier to entry, is easier to use than SOAP, and is entirely sufficient for these services.
Couldn’t agree more. From Amazon to Yahoo, it’s clear that REST is both popular and efficient for some tasks. Sooner or later, we’re going to see a vendor acknowledge this traction and support REST based development as a first class citizen alongside of – note that I did *not* say instead of – SOAP based development, using functionality they very likely already have in their tools. Whoever that vendor ends up being, they’re pretty much guaranteed to get some good pub. So the question is: who’s it gonna be?
Update: Alan Taylor, of Amazon Light fame (I discuss it here), is already playing with the new APIs.
