ReST is an abstraction of the architecture of the World Wide Web; what does ReST stand for?

ReST stands for Representational State Transfer. This architectural style is used for designing networked applications and is based on a set of principles that emphasize scalability, statelessness, and the use of standard protocols and data formats.

In the context of the World Wide Web, ReST leverages the existing HTTP protocol, allowing clients and servers to communicate through resources identified by URIs. Each resource can be manipulated using standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), which makes it easy to interact with web services.

The concepts of representation and state transfer are crucial to this architecture. Each resource can have multiple representations (like JSON or XML), and interactions with the resource facilitate a change in the application state, hence the term "state transfer."

Understanding the principles of ReST is fundamental for working with modern web APIs, as it provides a framework for building scalable and maintainable services in a distributed environment.