&gt; I was a big XML hater, back in the days of SOAP, but the more I see how services are defined today, the better the old rust bucket looks<p>You really should try to use SOAP again, you will soon change your mind. I used it a few weeks ago (after about 5 years of peaceful life) and let me tell you - it still sucks.<p>The problem with SOAP is that, even if it is a standard, every $@%#*! library implements it in a slightly different way, leading to incompatibilities. Maybe it was just my luck, but every time I tried to use SOAP I ended up debugging XML envelopes and whatnot. With REST&#x2F;HTTP + JSON? Just send, receive, parse, do what you want.<p>&lt;&#x2F;rant&gt;