Web services have to be one of the most underused parts of web development, especially in the corporate world. I can't say I've really heard of an instance where a (non-internet) company was using them for much of anything. Well, if you've been hesitant to leap into this powerful tool because you had to learn your way around SOAP, then this new article might just interest you.

In PHP Web Services Without SOAP, they show you how, with the help of REST (Representational State Transfer), and it's slowly showing signs of becoming more popular than its cousin, SOAP.

REST, unlike SOAP, doesn't require you to install a separate tool kit to send and receive data. Instead, the idea is that everything you need to use Web services is already available if you know where to look. HTTP lets you communicate your intentions through GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE requests. To access resources, you request URIs from Web servers...

Of course, they give you some samples of how to use REST, including some example searches from the Amazon web service.