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In 1998 SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) was developed at Microsoft to be a platform and language independent alternative to previous middleware such as DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) and CORBA (Common Object Requesting Broker Architecture). In 1999 SOAP 1.0 was released and in May 2000 SOAP 1.1 was submitted to the W3C where it formed the core of new web technologies, together with XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and WSDL (Web Services Definition Language). In 2005 SOAP 1.2 was finalized which is the current version. One of the core ideas of SOAP was that it was extensible, so that other standards could be integrated with it. A multitude of standards such as WS-RemotePortlets, WS-AutomaticTransaction, WS-Coordination, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Federation, WS-Security, WS-Policy, WS-Addressing; the list goes on, have evolved around SOAP. These standards have lead to a complexity of SOAP, which are perceived difficult to master by newcomers. SOAP is also more of a protocol for XML-based distributed systems which does not adhere closely to the basic web design. In 2000, Roy Thomas Fielding submitted a thesis in which he described an architectural style for developing web services, which was much closer to the inner workings of the web. This architectural style was Representational State Transfer (REST). In RESTful web services, the focus is on point to point communication over HTTP using XML. In reaction to the complexity of SOAP, RESTful web services gained quick adoption as a simpler alternative to SOAP. Today RESTful web services are utilized all over the web, especially in web API’s by big companies like Yahoo, Amazon and Google. The aim of this article is to have a closer look at RESTful web services, to see how it works, the pros and cons as well as what type of applications it can be used for. It will also discuss the way that REST differs from SOAP as well as how to make the paradigm shift from SOAP based web services to RESTful web services. In conjunction with this, the article will cover tools for developing RESTfull web services as well as samples. The article will give a high-level overview of RESTful web services and the application of these services in a Living Lab.