| SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a way of message transference over the Internet, they are XML formatted and sent using HTTP. HTTP avoids the majority of firewalls as they are the protocol that Web pages are sent via. Every SOAP message is in an envelope and this has a header (which has message ID and information like the date when the message was sent) and a body (which is the message itself). SOAP messages can be sent and received by many different operating systems as the yare all in the same format, so the message will not be changed between a Unix server and a Windows XP machine. |