REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural programming style that provides a simple and intuitive programming style for developers to access and update data over the internet. It uses HTTP as a protocol for data transfer, but not all HTTP interfaces are "RESTful". With REST, developers can easily access and manipulate data without having to worry about the underlying technology.

REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style of development having these basic principles.

• It should be stateless (transaction management should be managed by the client)
• It should access and/or identify all server resources using only a single URI.
• It should use the HTTP methods, GET, POST, PUT, DELETE for performing CRUD operations.
• It should return the result only in the form of consistent and simple JSON

When a REST API follows these basic principles, it is considered a RESTful API, whereas a REST API only follows some but not all the above principles.

You can create your APIs using the Eclipse Tooling to generate a service archive file for the z/OS application.

API tooling provides additional data mapping. Use the editor to describe the API and how it maps to undelying services. It also adds logic to interpret the results to add support for multiple HTTP response code.

Note: All service archives files are functionally equivalent regardless of how there are created or which resources they are intended to access.