Question: REST or SOAP for data access in a research lab

I have a programming issue that I'm putting out to the lazyweb to see if I'm on the right track.

Here's the problem: we have a UHV system in our lab. At any point in time, there is a lot of information that we want to know about the status of this system. It should be noted that this information is simply a report on the status of the system, the data isn't necessarily actual experimental data. For example, we need to know the pressure in any one of the chambers (there are four). We would also like to know the temperature of any one of the sample stages of the system, the status of the pumps, the status of the gate valves, etc. etc. etc.

In principle, we can use labview or something to grab all of the data from the pressure gauge controllers, pump controllers, etc. and put it somewhere easily accessible in a useful format. No problem. Once we have the data, we need to be able to access it, and I think this is where SOAP or REST comes in. It would be really great to just be able to have some kind of API where we could go out and grab specific subsets of that data. Like maybe we want to know what the pressure of each individual chamber was over the past 24h in order to plot this data and see if somebody opened the loadlock.

Am I thinking about this right? Is SOAP or REST the way to get this data out there in a useful format?

I prefer programming in python, and I'm guessing that somebody has already written the framework for me.