SOAP:

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a way for a program running in one kind of operating system
(such as Windows 2000) to communicate with a program in the same (or) another kind of an operating
system (such as Linux) by using the World Wide Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and its
Extensible Markup Language (XML) as the mechanisms for information exchange.
Since Web protocols are installed and available for use by all major operating system platforms,
HTTP and XML provide an already at-hand solution to the problem of how programs running under
different operating systems in a network can communicate with each other. SOAP specifies exactly how
to encode an HTTP header and an XML file so that a program in one computer can call a program in
another computer and pass it information.
1. SOAP was developed by Microsoft.
2. Sun Microsystems' Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is a similar client/server inters program protocol
between programs written in Java.
3. An advantage of SOAP is that program calls are much more likely to get through firewall servers that
screen out requests other than those for known applications (through the designated port mechanism).
Since HTTP requests are usually allowed through firewalls, programs using SOAP to communicate can be
sure that they can communicate with programs anywhere.
SOAP, originally an acronym for Simple Object Access protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging
structured information in the implementation of web services in computer networks.
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SOAP is a communication protocol.

SOAP is for communication between applications.
SOAP is a format for sending messages.
SOAP is platform independent.
SOAP is language independent.
SOAP is based on XML.
SOAP allows you to get around firewalls.

Why SOAP?
1. It is important for application development to allow Internet communication between programs.
Today's applications communicate using Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) between objects like DCOM and
CORBA, but HTTP was not designed for this. RPC represents a compatibility and security problem;
firewalls and proxy servers will normally block this kind of traffic.
2. A better way to communicate between applications is over HTTP, because HTTP is supported by all
Internet browsers and servers. SOAP was created to accomplish this.
3. SOAP provides a way to communicate between applications running on different operating systems,
with different technologies and programming languages.

SOAP1:
Short for Simple Object Access Protocol, a lightweight XML-based messaging protocol used to encode
the information in Web service request and response messages before sending them over a network.
SOAP messages are independent of any operating system or protocol and may be transported using a
variety of Internet protocols, including SMTP, MIME, and HTTP.
SOAP2:
SOAP is a lightweight protocol intended for exchanging structured information in a decentralized,
distributed environment. SOAP uses XML technologies to define an extensible messaging framework,
which provides a message construct that can be exchanged over a variety of underlying protocols. The
framework has been designed to be independent of any particular programming model and other
implementation specific semantics.
1. SOAP can be used over any transport protocol such as TCP, HTTP, and SMTP.
2. SOAP enables client applications to easily connect to remote services and invoke remote methods.