Savas Parastatidis, MSc., PhD. and technical computing architect at Microsoft has written a definition of MEST that also compares and contrasts it with REST. Parastatidis sees REST as being primarily about resources at the end of URLs where MEST would be the paradigm for the basic message in a business applications, such as an invoice requiring an

action in a basic accounting system. "We would like to see MEST become

for service-orientation and Web Services what REST is for resource-orientation and the Web," writes Parastatidis. In explaining

the basics of MEST, Parastatidis lists four key points: (1) MEST is

not an application protocol in the same way that REST is not one either;

(2) It is based on the transfer of a message and the processing of the

contents of that message in application-specific ways; (3) The behavior

of what happens with the contents of a message is defined through

protocols (description of complex message-exchange patterns); (4) MEST

attempts to describe service-oriented architectures in terms of services and messages and a set of architectural principles.