Simple Object Access Protocol

[Previous] [Next]

We'd like to finish this chapter by telling you briefly about Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). SOAP is wholly based on two Internet standards, HTTP and XML. SOAP allows a browser to access remote objects, or even one Web server to access objects on another Web server, and it's totally platform independent. Every detail of the call syntax is encoded as XML and so is the response coming from the server. This structure makes it possible, for example, for a COM- or COM+-based browser to call objects on a CORBA server or an IBM mainframe. The only capabilities needed on the server on which the called object resides are those of unpacking the XML text and converting it to an object call, and receiving the object's response and packing it as XML to return it to the client.

Even though SOAP is a brand-new phenomenon, you can already find quite a lot to read about it. For example, an article written by Aaron Skonnard was published in the January 2000 issue of Microsoft Internet Developer (MIND) magazine. MIND has also published this article on http://www.microsoft.com/mind/0100/soap/soap.asp. The SOAP specification is published on http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/general/soapspec-v1.asp. You should read one or both of these publications because more likely than not, you'll be using SOAP in the reasonably near future.

Microsoft has made SOAP part of Windows DNA 2000 and plans to support SOAP as a mechanism for bridging object models. You'll find a press release about that at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/Sept99/XMLPr.htm. And finally, DevelopMentor provides implementations of SOAP for different script languages and for COM. You can read more about that at http://www.develop.com/soap.