I'd like to point out that REST is not something built on top of the Web, it's actually the architectural style on which the Web is based (even though this styl

I'd like to point out that REST is not something built on top of the Web, it's actually the architectural style on which the Web is based (even though this style has been defined years after the Web was invented). You can have a resource model for your domain and build your own custom RESTful protocol on top of raw TCP/UDP and pick a binary encoding for data transfer.