Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

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Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

What about .NET and SOAP?

What can Web Services and SOAP Do for You?

Introduction

Do you know any programmers who don't bathe regularly and need some special motivation? While you might think this article is about the new "Shower Shock Soap"—the world's first caffeinated soap from ThinkGeek—SOAP or Simple Object Application Protocol actually is more than just an Irish Spring alternative to developers, and it should mean more to you as well!

What has Microsoft provided to the world of corporate computing? Standards and integration among wide arrays of applications within the Microsoft Windows operating system. As the World Wide Web and Web services become more and more in demand, the new emerging Web services standards, such as SOAP, enable machine-to-machine, program-to-program, and system-to-system integration that is easier than ever before.

SOAP eliminates the operating system limitations currently faced in multi-operating system environments, ranging from very big data centers all the way down to the smallest company integrating Linux to save costs. Think of the data center supporting Wall Street! This data center includes thousands, and even millions of bits of data on different machines, running under different operating systems, of various flavors. While much of this data is interrelated, it is currently duplicated.

Colleges and many universities have the same problem, and represent another example where extensive data transfer routines take place. Even small- and medium-sized businesses that are now supporting Linux, Macintosh, and Windows platforms, have integration needs, and, as a result, they want their choice of vendor products to help reduce costs. Web services and the World Wide Web are going to provide the answer as we move forward.

What is SOAP?

According to Microsoft, SOAP is a lightweight XML-based messaging protocol used to encode the information in Web service request and response messages before sending them over a network. SOAP messages are independent of any operating system or protocol and may be transported using a variety of Internet protocols, including SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol).

Apache, a clearinghouse of Web Services projects, says SOAP consists of three parts: an envelope defining a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it, a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined data types, and a convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses.

A Brief History

Microsoft provides an analogy: "If XML represents the basic language, then SOAP is the grammar."

SOAP originated in early 1998, and in "computer" years, that is almost a lifetime. Unlike other products, however, SOAP had some big hurdles to face. First, SOAP depends on XML; in 1998, XML standards were also in development, and as a result, each standard limited the other's development path. In addition, SOAP is a collaborative between many players, which required that a vendor balance be found.

SOAP is used to create "open pathways" or "integration" between all operating systems, whereas previously, HP, Microsoft, SUN, IBM and many other vendors had a unique market niche based on the proprietary nature of the platform. These vendor wars pitted vendor against vendor in the race to develop the standardization or improve on the standardization that was started by one vendor and then taken over by another. Yet, they did achieve this collaboration and SOAP is real. Vendors moved past the wars and into the next millennium.

Where is SOAP Today?

Today, SOAP is still in its infancy. The current version of SOAP is v1.1, and the actual specification can be found at online. The XML schema specifications are standard and available, but the standardized metadata (how the data is formatted) for SOAP is not yet complete. Spearheading this effort as the centralized body is the World Wide Web consortium (W3C), the international consortium of companies involved with the World Wide Web, the Internet, and the development of SOAP.

What about .NET and SOAP?

Certainly we have all heard the term ".NET" and we have seen a number of commercials on the subject, but the concept has not yet fully sunk in—even in some technical circles. Many firms working on development projects today are using the .NET platform. .NET is Microsoft's implementation of Web services. XML, SOAP, and a few other acronyms are all part of the total solution and recipe.

What can Web Services and SOAP Do for You?

In two simple words: Data Integration! Have you recently commented on the fact that you have data distributed throughout multiple software packages and databases? Certainly, I have heard that complaint for years. Have you expressed an interest in wanting everything integrated, or have you recently moved to the "one vendor for everything" model only to find that a single vendor doesn't really have all the products or features you want?

Microsoft reports that companies often find that valuable information is locked away in stand-alone systems that were not designed to exchange information with other systems. If information is the life blood of any company, the real beauty of technology is in the access to this information.

Systems and software programs do what they were made to do, but often fail to meet company goals because of all the different systems within an office. We are frustrated with the duplication within our own offices and with multiple databases, multiple copies of the customer information, and bits and pieces of data spread throughout accounting, tax prep, and practice management software. Web Services and SOAP, and its sister tools, are all about solving this problem in a scalable format.