HTTP Methods
Because REST is HTTP-centric, it supports the HTTP common operations GET, PUT, DELETE, and POST. The really nice thing about this is that these common operations each map to a database CRUD operation. For example, PUT is your Create, GET is your Read, POST is your Update, and DELETE is your Delete database operations. You can probably see where this would be beneficial, especially to clients using the service. HTML Forms can be used to change data by using the POST method to the UPDATE URI of a resource (or use PUT to create), while information can be returned in numerous formats (JSON, XML) with a GET request on the resource. It's very similar to AJAX calls, as these calls construct your packet header in much the same way when interacting with a web service.