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TL;DRA REST API, short for Representational State Transfer application programming interface, is a web interface that lets one software system request structured data from another over HTTP and receive it in a machine-readable format such as JSON or XML, with no manual lookup in between. The receiving system reads and books the data automatically.
The broader term is Webservice: a software system designed to support interoperable machine to machine interaction over a network. REST and the older SOAP are two styles of building such a service. In pharmaceutical integration the practical meaning is narrow and concrete: instead of an employee searching a database front end for a package and reading off its price or availability, the ERP or WAWI system asks the interface directly for that record and processes the answer.
REST itself is an architectural style rather than a single product. According to the MDN Web Docs glossary, REST refers to a group of software design constraints that produce efficient, reliable and scalable distributed systems, in which a resource such as a document is transferred through standardised client and server interactions. Each resource sits behind a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and is acted on with standard HTTP methods. In a pharmaceutical context the resource is typically a package identified by its PZN, and the representation returned is that package's master data, price cascade or distribution status.
These five terms all connect systems, and they get blurred constantly in pharmaceutical projects. They operate at different levels: REST and SOAP are general technical styles, MSV3 is a domain specific pharmacy standard, EDI is a document exchange family, and a file feed is a scheduled bulk transfer. The table keeps them straight.
| Interface | What it is | Orientation | Typical use in pharma |
|---|---|---|---|
| REST API | General resource-oriented web interface over HTTP | Real-time request and response | Query a PZN or data slice, receive JSON/XML |
| SOAP Webservice | Older XML-envelope web service, described by WSDL | Real-time, message-enveloped | Legacy integrations and strictly-typed contracts |
| MSV3 | Pharmacy-to-wholesaler ordering standard | Real-time query and order | Availability check and order to a wholesaler |
| EDI / EDIFACT | Structured business-document exchange | Often batch or message-based | Orders, dispatch notes, invoices |
| File feed (FTP/CSV) | Scheduled bulk transfer of a dataset | Batch, periodic | Nightly load of a full article master file |
Put simply, REST is the general, resource-oriented, real-time way for two systems to talk, and it says nothing about pharmaceutical ordering on its own. SOAP is the same idea in an older XML envelope style, described by a WSDL contract. MSV3 is the specialised standard for one pharmaceutical process, the real-time availability check and order between a pharmacy and a wholesaler. EDI is the wider family that carries the invoice and dispatch note that follow. A file feed over FTP is not an interactive interface at all, it is a scheduled drop of a whole dataset. The five are complementary, and one integration often uses several: a REST API to read master data, a file feed for the bulk nightly load, and MSV3 for ordering.
The value is that a data point moves from the source into the operational system without a human retyping it. A typical read runs as an ordered sequence.
One point is easy to miss: interactive, per-record calls are one use, but pulling data in bulk or embedding a whole dataset into your own system is a licensing question, not just a technical one. Bulk and integration use of aggregated pharmaceutical data depends on a raw-data licence that governs what you may store and redistribute; see the raw-data licence entry for what that covers.
pharmazie.com is an aggregator of licensed pharmaceutical data, and it offers programmatic access to that aggregated data rather than acting as the primary source. The integration surface, as described in its own capability documentation, is the following.
One honest limitation: REST, SOAP and the web service concept are general, standards-based technology, not something pharmazie.com invented or owns. What the platform provides is a REST API and web services onto its aggregated data, plus the connectors and file feeds most integration projects need. The generic technical facts here come from primary technical references, MDN and the W3C; the specifics of which formats, keys and ERP targets are supported come from pharmazie.com's own capability description and should be confirmed against a current interface specification before a build.
