The Protocol: SOAP
The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) provides a mechanism for distributing objects over the Web. This means that it is a way for developers to remotely make method calls upon classes and objects that exist on a remote server. You might not know in which language the objects you are calling are written. It's the latest in a long series of similar projects, such as CORBA, DCOM, and XML-RPC.
SOAP defines the use of XML and HTTP to access services, objects, and servers in a platform-independent manner. SOAP is a protocol that acts as the glue between heterogeneous software components.
Maybe you've heard that SOAP is a Microsoft specific protocol. This is not true, although Microsoft offers an implementation of the specification. ...
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