I'm asked to set up a new webservice which should be easily usable in whatever language (php, .NET, Java, etc.) possible. Of course rolling my own can be done, accepting different content-types (xml / x-www-form-urlencoded (normal post) / json / etc.), but an existing method or mechanism would of course be prefered, cutting down time spent on development for the consumers of the service.

The webservice does accept modifications / sets (it is not only simply data retrieval), but those will most likely be quite a lot less then gets (we estimate about 2.5% sets, 97.5 gets). The term webservice here indicates the protocol should go over HTTP, not being able to implement it totally client sided (javascript in the end-users browser etc.), as it needs specific user authentication.

Both gets and sets are pretty light on the parameter count (usually 1 to 4). Methods like REST (which I'd prefer for only gets), XML-RPC & SOAP (might be a bit overkill, but has the advantage of explicitly defined methods and returns) are the usual suspects.

What in your opinion / experience is the most widely 'spoken' and most easily implementable protocol in different languages (seen from the consumers' viewpoint) which could fullfill this need?