Re: IBM i in the cloud (was social media)

REST is completely acceptable for using in external facing applications.
SOAP is harder to use and more complex. Not to mention has more overhead.
It is my prediction that in the very near future 2-5 years REST will be
the vastly dominant data transfer format (because it creates native
javascript elements). Security is what you make it. XML is no more
secure than JSON. Its all about how you handlet he authentication.

I don't disagree in general that REST can be used externally. The reason
I would use SOAP has little to do with security; it is that SOAP has a
more standardized interface and because of that it is a better fit
communication where you don't necessarily have control over both ends of
the communication (such as with partners). In those cases, the WSDL
provides a great way of standardizing the communication.

Joe