HTTP communicates over TCP/IP. An HTTP client connects to an HTTP server using TCP. After establishing a connection, the client can send an HTTP request message to the server:
The server then processes the request and sends an HTTP response back to the client. The response contains a status code that indicates the status of the request:
In the example above, the server returned a status code of 200. This is the standard success code for HTTP.
If the server could not decode the request, it could have returned something like this:
The SOAP specification defines the structure of the SOAP messages, not how they are exchanged. This gap is filled by what is called "SOAP Bindings". SOAP bindings are mechanisms which allow SOAP messages to be effectively exchanged using a transport protocol.
Most SOAP implementations provide bindings for common transport protocols, such as HTTP or SMTP.
HTTP is synchronous and widely used. A SOAP HTTP request specifies at least two HTTP headers: Content-Type and Content-Length.
SMTP is asynchronous and is used in last resort or particular cases.
Java implementations of SOAP usually provide a specific binding for the JMS (Java Messaging System) protocol.
The Content-Type header for a SOAP request and response defines the MIME type for the message and the character encoding (optional) used for the XML body of the request or response.
The Content-Length header for a SOAP request and response specifies the number of bytes in the body of the request or response.
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