A “Web Service” is a software service generally available over a network, in this case the internet. Wirefast’s implementation uses secure HTTP (HTTPS) providing easy transport through corporate firewalls and natural support for request/response messages.

REST

Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style of Web service using, in Wirefast’s implementation, standard HTTP verbs to create an API to the Wirefast Messaging System (WMS). The API which meets the constraints defined by REST, is termed RESTful and is stateless as far as the server side communications are concerned, all states being managed by the client side. Communications are handled by HTTP verbs containing JSON (Java Script Object Notation) formatted messages.

SOAP

The message payload is formatted according to SOAP standards which use XML to define a simple remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism, response messages and error handling.