Section 4.5. Summary

4.5. Summary

This chapter described SOAP, which is the underlying messaging framework for Web services. It covered the SOAP processing model and the way its extensibility mechanisms allow the specification of interoperable protocols. The extension mechanisms enable the specifications that underpin the Web service architecture to compose and process complex messages.

SOAP can be bound to different underlying transports, such as HTTP and IBM WebSphereMQ. This allows the deployment of the Web services architecture on a heterogeneous network and infrastructure. You can use SOAP messages to send large amounts of binary data by using an attachment mechanism.