What are the best uses of REST services?

Question

I know sites like Facebook are now using REST services, but I am wondering of other applications that use REST and if there are specific situations when the use of REST is more

Answer 1

SOAP is the most popular alternative to REST, and I found a few good links describing their differences and when to use which:

• REST vs SOAP Web Services
• When to use REST and when to use SOAP
• RESTful Web Services

The gist of it is that REST is much more simple than its alternatives (especially SOAP), and should be used when all you need is basic functionality (create/read/update/delete), and your service is stateless.

If you want an example application that uses REST, CouchDB does. (I can't think of any other ones off the top of my head.) On top of that, lots of websites use it, such as Flickr, del.icio.us, Bloglines, and Technorati.