Final answer:
REST, or Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style for designing networked applications, utilizing a stateless, client-server protocol, primarily HTTP. It is characterized by its use of HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE to manage resources identified by URIs. REST is widely used in developing modern web services.
Step-by-step explanation:
REST, or Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style used for designing networked applications. It relies on a stateless, client-server, cacheable communications protocol -- the HTTP. RESTful systems are characterized by how they are stateless and separate concerns between client and server. A RESTful API exposes a set of resources that identify the targets of the interaction with its clients. Resources are identified by URIs, which provide a global addressing space for resource and service discovery.
RESTful services use HTTP methods explicitly, including GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and others. These methods are used to perform the desired actions on the resources. For example, to retrieve a resource, you would use GET; to create a new resource, you would use POST; to update a resource, PUT; and to delete, DELETE. REST is widely used in the development of modern web services, where it has become the standard for designing networked applications due to its simplicity and how it effectively uses the web's existing infrastructure.