This document provides an introduction to REST (Representational State Transfer), an architectural style for developing web-based systems. It describes REST's motivation as utilizing the basic characteristics of the web that made it successful. The document outlines REST's basic philosophy of resources being identified by URLs and represented in different formats. It also summarizes REST's basic architecture of clients making HTTP requests to servers and receiving lightweight XML responses. The document provides examples of how a parts supplier could implement RESTful services for getting a parts list, part details, and submitting purchase orders.