The biggest misconception to get over is that REST has nothing to do with HTTP. You can implement REST over any transport protocol. Clean URLs, status codes, a

The biggest misconception to get over is that REST has nothing to do with HTTP. You can implement REST over any transport protocol. Clean URLs, status codes, and methods are irrelevant. Everything revolves around media types. Your service provides resources with well-defined media types. Your clients send requests with recognized media types. That said, this simple architectural style is exceedingly difficult to pull off. Most of what people call "REST" is nothing more than JSON-RPC. There's nothing wrong with that, but Fielding invented REST, so he gets to say what it is. Fielding's dissertation, where REST is defined, isn't much help though. The biggest problem is its highly abstract nature with few clarifying examples of what REST is and is not. This article provides these examples, and so should compliment Fielding's dissertation.