Oracle Cloud ERP(SaaS) Technical Interview Questions- SOAP/REST API

SOAP
- Simple Object Access Protocol
- SOAP is a protocol which is used to interchange data between applications which are built on different programming languages. SOAP is built upon the XML specification and works with the HTTP protocol.
REST
- Representation State Transfer
- A REST API (also known as RESTful API) is an application programming interface (API or web API) that conforms to the constraints of REST architectural style and allows for interaction with RESTful web services
How SOAP/REST API are used in Oracle Cloud ERP?
- Oracle Provides SOAP/REST API for the purposed of performing CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) operations on the different entities
- SOAP/REST API – are used for both Inbound and Outbound Integrations
- Availability of these webservices depends on the modules, always validate the latest info from: docs.oracle.com to check out the availability of a service on a particular entity
SOA/REST Comparison

SOAP vs REST Web Service	SOAP	REST
Meaning	Simple Object Access Protocol	Representational State Transfer
Design	Standard protocol with predefined rules to follow	Architectural style with loose recommendation and guidelines
Approach	Function-driven	Data-driven
Statefulness	Stateless by default but a SOAP API can be made stateful	Stateless in nature, no server-side sessions
Caching	API calls are not cached	API calls are cached
Security	WS-Security with SSL support. Provides an inbuilt ACID compliance	Supports SSL and HTTPS
Performance	Requires more power, resources, and bandwidth.	Requires fewer resources
Messaging format	Only XML	XML, JSON, plain text, YAML, HTML and others
Transfer protocols	SMTP, HTTP, UDP, and others	Only HTTP
Nature	Heavyweight	Lightweight
Recommended for	Financial services, enterprise level apps, payment gateways, high-security apps, telecommunication services.	Public APIs for web services, social networks, and mobile services.
Advantages	Standardization, security, extensibility	High Performance, Scalability, Flexibility and browser friendliness
Disadvantages	More complex, poor performance, less flexibility	Unsuitable for distributed environments, less security
Coupling	TIghtly Coupled	Loosely coupled