title: Dumb questions on REST
body: <ol>
  <li><p>Can REST be purely used as a lightweight SOAP alternative (without really worrying about the nouns and verbs associated)? What I really hate about SOAP is the overhead it adds in terms of message payload and I like the usage of JSON in REST which should make communication pithy.</p></li>
  <li><p>For ease of client-side integration, what is the best way to provide the definitions from the server to the client. Reading other posts <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6614036/restful-development-how-to-share-with-clients">post1</a> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1312087/what-is-the-reason-for-using-wadl">post2</a>, there seem to be a lot of animosity against providing a WSDL like alternative (viz. WADL?). If the server and client are both aware of changes that might happen and if my reason for using REST is only #1 above, then why is it such a bad thing? </p></li>
  </ol>