SOAP is still not XML

Description:I was surprised to see an old rant of mine quoted in Dr. Dobb's Python-URL. Of late I've simply ceased to think about SOAP. It has become an irrelevance. I rarely come across SOAP in my sojourns. I'm not sure whether this is just bias coloring experience. I had two recent run-ins with SOAP late last year: one while using Java and one while using Python. The state of Python's SOAP implementations seemed a complete mess because of neglect. The state of Java's SOAP implementations seemed a complete mess for a near-opposite reason: energetic conformance to the many SOAP flavors. This slavishness to SOAP's worst aspects makes it impossible to figure out how to portably work with rich data using SOAP. If you're not sticking to Java's primitive data types (in particular, if you're thinking of your data in XML terms), there is no chance these libraries will fit your head.