Representational State Transfer (REST) has been gaining steam over the past two years. While it's nothing new under the sun -- in fact it's now seven years old -- the simple, HTTP-based programming style has potential that is just being tapped.

It's also helping to better define service-oriented architecture. Far too many think of SOA as being synonymous with the SOAP messaging protocol. While SOAP, along with WSDL and UDDI, was the standard in vogue five years ago when SOA began to enter the mass consciousness, it is not the basis for SOA. SOAP is one way to build a Web service, it is not the only way to do it.