If your familiar with GWT RPC, then you you know that it’s it’s provides a very nice client side framework for doing AJAX requests against Java Servlets.  The sad part is that it uses a binary protocol.  That protocol is not easily understood by other languages or frameworks.

I’m one of those guys that thinks that REST is great technology. Sure, REST is does not do everything that SOAP can do, but I think that REST is built to be SIMPLE, something that SOAP and it’s WS-* buddies forgot about.