What are the key differences between SOAP and RESTful web services?

Key Differences Between SOAP and RESTful Web Services:

1. Protocol: SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol-based web service, whereas REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style.
2. Flexibility: RESTful web services are more flexible as they can support different data formats such as JSON, XML, HTML, etc., while SOAP primarily uses XML.
3. State: REST is stateless, meaning each request from a client to the server must contain all the information necessary to understand the request, whereas SOAP maintains the conversational state between requests.
4. Operations: SOAP services expose operations, while RESTful services use standard HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.
5. Security: SOAP has built-in security features like WS-Security, while in REST, security needs to be implemented separately using SSL, OAuth, etc.
6. Performance: RESTful web services are generally considered more lightweight and faster compared to SOAP due to simpler message formats and statelessness.

By understanding these key differences, developers can choose the most appropriate web service architecture based on their project requirements and constraints.