What is Web Services REST?

REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for designing networked applications. It relies on a stateless, client-server, cacheable communications protocol -- typically HTTP. REST defines a set of constraints for how the client and server interact. RESTful web services are commonly used for building APIs that enable communication and data exchange between different software systems over the internet. Key principles include the use of standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), resource identification through URIs, and the representation of resources in various formats like JSON or XML.