Simple Object Access Protocol
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The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a lightweight XML-based protocol for exchanging information in a decentralized distributed environment. SOAP supports different styles of information exchange, including RPC-oriented and message-oriented exchange. RPC style information exchange allows for request-response processing, where an endpoint receives a procedure-oriented message and replies with a correlated response message. Message-oriented information exchange supports organizations and applications that need to exchange messages or other types of documents where a message is sent, but the sender might not expect or wait for an immediate response. Message-oriented information exchange is also called document style exchange.

SOAP has the following features:

  • Protocol independence
  • Language independence
  • Platform and operating system independence
  • Support for SOAP XML messages incorporating attachments (using the multipart MIME structure)