This section provides a quick summary of SOAP protocol.
SOAP is an XML based protocol intended for exchanging structured information in a distributed application
environment.
SOAP 1.2 specification is divided into two parts.
SOAP part 1 defines the SOAP messaging framework, which contains the following key concepts:
SOAP Message Construct - How a SOAP message should be constructed.
SOAP Protocol Binding Framework - How a SOAP message should be bound a communication protocol
to carry it from the sender to the receiver.
SOAP Processing Model - How a SOAP message should be processed by SOAP receivers.
SOAP Extensibility Model - How SOAP can be extended to add SOAP features and SOAP modules.
SOAP part 2 defines a set of adjuncts that can be used to extend the SOAP messaging framework:
SOAP Data Model - How data structures and values should be represented as a graph of nodes.
SOAP Encoding - How data presented in SOAP Data Model should be encoded as XML data.
SOAP RPC Presentation - How Remote Procedure Call (RPC) should be modeled with SOAP.
SOAP Convention for Describing Features and Bindings - How SOAP Features and Bindings should be described.
SOAP Supplied Features - Commonly used SOAP extensions.
SOAP HTTP Binding - How a SOAP message is bound to HTTP.
SOAP is actually a communication protocol that defines how a message should be constructed, transmitted from one node
to another, and processed by each node as shown in the following diagram:
SOAP node
|
| Construct an initial SOAP message
| Bind the initial message for transmission
| Transmit the initial message
v
----------> SOAP node
|
| Receive the initial message
| Process some part of the initial message
| Reconstruct an intermediate SOAP message
| Bind the intermediate message for transmission
| Transmit the intermediate message
v
----------> SOAP node
|
| ...
v
----------> SOAP node
|
| Receive the final message
| Process the final message
v
Done
