The Preface of Developing RESTful Services with JAX-RS 2.0, WebSockets, and JSON is a good place to start if you are thinking of purchasing this book and want to get an overview of what it entails.

The problem with RESTful web services that use JSON or XML as a data exchange is bloat and verbosity. Compare REST vs GraphQL performance if you want to simplify your web API development.

It is an alternative to REST that has gained traction for its performance and simplicity. gRPC gives you a full duplex connection over HTTP/2.