Protocol - Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks.

It relies on Extensible Markup Language (XML) as its message format, and usually relies on other Application Layer protocols (most notably Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and HTTP) for message negotiation and transmission.

Basically, you can compare the SOAP logical as a web form process. When you click on the button (ok, send, apply, …) of a web form, you send the data present in the form and the server send you back other data.

The process for SOAP is the same, you send an XML file and the server then can perform some actions or send you back the result in a XML format. It's why :

• when you code a program, you have to define the URL of the Web Service.
• when you see the log session of the web service server, you can see the name of a browser (because the SOAP implementation simulate a browser)

A SOAP message could be sent to a web service enabled web site (for example, a house price database) with the parameters needed for a search. The site would then return an XML-formatted document with the resulting data (prices, location, features, etc).

data types in outgoing and incoming SOAP 1.1 and 1.2 messages

• xsd:any
• xsd:base64Binary
• xsd:string
• xsd:date
• xsd:time
• xsd:dateTime
• xsd:double
• xsd:decimal
• xsd:int
• xsd:short
• xsd:long
• xsd:byte
• xsd:Boolean
• xsd:float

• SOAP