I'm looking for the proper name for a web service that responds with text as opposed to XML. As an example this "cardServer" service will return 5 cards for a poker hand.

http://hostname:8080/cardServer/deal/Game=Poker&Qty=5

The result could look like this:

Card1=Ad
Card2=Kc
Card3=Ts
Card4=5d
Card5=3d

The real world example is not as trivial, but the concept is the same. Parameters if any are passed as POST variables.

We currently parse the response into a string list and use the values. The process works just fine. What I'm wondering if this service method has a name that has easier tools to deal with the responses and therefore did we reinvent the wheel? For the record the service was provided and maintained by a customer.