why REST(Representational State Transfer)

This is a good question when you keep in mind that we have been very successfully
developing Rails-Applications for two years now using the proved MVC-Concept.
What REST shows us however, is that Rails has room for conceptional improvements,
as the following feature list of REST-based Applications makes clear:

1.Clean URLs.
      REST-URLs are representing resources and not actions. URLs always
have the same format: first comes the controller and then the id of the referenced
resource. The requested manipulation is hidden from the URL and is expressed with
the help of HTTP verbs.
2.Different Response-Formats.
      REST-Controllers are developed in a way, that actions
can deliver different response-formats. Depending on the requirements of the client,
the same action can deliver HTML, XML or RSS; the application becomes able to
handle multiple client demands.
3.Less Code.
       The development of multi-client capable actions avoids repetitions in the
sense of DRY2 and results in controllers having less code.
4.CRUD-oriented Controllers.
       Controller and resource melt together into one unit in
a way that each controller is responsible for the manipulation of one resource type.
Clear application design. RESTful development results in a conceptional clear and
maintainable application design.