by Administrator
15. May 2009 07:29
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is the protocol used by client applications for send-
ing requests to and receiving responses from Web services. SOAP is a lightweight protocol
built on top of HTTP—the protocol used by the Web to send and receive HTML pages. SOAP
defines an XML grammar for specifying the names of Web methods that a consumer can in-
voke on a Web service, for defining the parameters and return values, and for describing the
types of parameters and return values. When a client calls a Web service, it must specify the
method and parameters by using this XML grammar.
SOAP is an industry standard. Its function is to improve cross-platform interoperability. The
strength of SOAP is its simplicity and also the fact that it is based on other industry-standard
technologies, such as HTTP and XML. The SOAP specification defines a number of things. The
most important are the following:
* The format of a SOAP message
* How data should be encoded
* How to send messages (method calls)
* How to process replies
Descriptions of the exact details of how SOAP works and the internal format of a SOAP
message are beyond the scope of this book. It is highly unlikely that you will ever need
to create and format SOAP messages manually because many development tools, includ-
ing Visual Studio 2008, automate this process, presenting a programmer-friendly API to
developers building Web services and client applications.
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Tags: asp.net, SOAP