ASP.NET WEB API is an enhanced form of the web application that provides services across different sets of devices and platform[OS].
These are the web applications we use for exchanging information on the web and we use HTTP protocols and SOAP protocols for accessing services. SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol.
Web API is known for developing REST services. REST stands for Representational State Transfer. It supports always HTTP based services and only the state of the object is sent to the server.
The state of an object always carried in the form of XML.
For each request, we don't have to create an object.
SOAP used as XML-based protocols for developing connected web applications.
REST work with plain text, XML, HTML, and JSON.
There are some REST API methods for performing CRUD operations,
- POST- Create CRUD operation used to create a resource.
- GET- Read a resource
- PUT- Update a resource.
- DELETE - Delete
REST API is used for distributed systems (distributed database). Multiple database servers join together to work as a single server known as a cluster. A different set of database instances joins together that forms a cluster.