Over the recent years, the introduction of XML has revolutionized the way data is transferred between systems. XML, similar to the popular HTML of common web pages, is a meta-language made up of non-binary ASCII text. [PDF]

Sometimes a client or server wants or needs to send some application-specific binary data to its peer. For example, a service might want to return a picture or audio data. The preferred way of sending these data over SOAP is by using the SOAP with Attachments specification. This specification defines how data is serialized into a MIME Multipart message and how this data is referenced.

I had read about SOAP and attended a few conferences on the subject about a year ago, but didn't have much of a need for the technology back then. Recently our voice applications platform provider, Bevocal, started to make their call logs and telephony functions available via SOAP. Ah, the perfect excuse to finally jump in and start writing some SOAP client software. I found these documents below to be extremely helpful in ramping me back up on XML, SOAP, and the power these bring to interop.

WASP Server for Java contains support for the Last Call for Comments Working Draft (2002/06/26) version of SOAP 1.2. WASP, along with the other implementations, makes it possible for the SOAP 1.2 specification to advance to a W3C Recommendation.

For a variety of reasons, it is desirable that some web services, compliant with the SOAP HTTP Binding, can also be accessed via HTTP GET. This requirement mandates that the information necessary to access the resource can be expressed in an HTTUP URI.

SOAP version 1.2 provides the denition of an XML document which can be used for exchanging structured and typed information between peers in a decentralized, distributed environment.

What is SOAP ? [PDF]

Extending SOAP to Adhere to Session-oriented Communication

This chapter describes the mechanism for calling SOAP services from the BeVocal VoiceXML interpreter. It describes the binding between the JavaScript interpreter in VoiceXML and the SOAP services. It also documents the method by which the interpreter locates SOAP services.

The sweet spot is GET and POST of XML Infomation Sets. REST's content independence and SOAP's transport independence are simultaneously both key strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Both contain speculative features that have not been widely adopted (e.g., DELETE? Content-Negotiation?). The most underrated feature of SOAP is asynchronous messaging.

This class encapsulates all HTTP related logic for a SOAP server, independent of what web server it's attached to. If you want to use this class you should follow simple guideline mentioned above.

A SOAP message is an XML document that consists of a mandatory SOAP Envelop element having an optional SOAP Header and a mandatory SOAP body. [PDF]

Custom JSP taglib. Lets you execute SOAP over HTTP requests and prepare SOAP messages. Body tag SOAPrequest executes SOAP over HTTP request. You must set target URL and SOAPaction as parameters for this tag. Body for this tag will be interpreted as an envelope for SOAP message. Body tags SOAPmessage, SOAPheaders and SOAPbody help you to prepare SOAP response.

What Object Does SOAP Access?

White Paper SIP and SOAP [PDF]

Unique SOAP-to-C/C++ binding: gSOAP provides an automated mapping of native C/C++ and user-defined application data types to XML data types. Data is serialized in XML "in-situ" by the pre-compiled encoding routines generated by the gSOAP compiler.

SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol [PPT]

SOAP and Web Services

Exciting new facilities are being developed on the Internet called Web Services. These are services, provided by Internet attached organizations, are being offered to other attached organizations. The major elements of Web Services are a directories, which contain descriptions of available Web Services, descriptors, describing available services, and protocols, which provide access to such services.

Web Services using SOAP