SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol.
SOAP is a protocol for accessing web services.
SOAP is based on XML.
Before you study SOAP you should have a basic understanding of XML and XML Namespaces.
If you want to study these subjects first, please read our XML Tutorial.
It is important for application development to allow Internet communication between programs.
Today's applications communicate using Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) between objects like DCOM and CORBA, but HTTP was not designed for this. RPC represents a compatibility and security problem; firewalls and proxy servers will normally block this kind of traffic.
A better way to communicate between applications is over HTTP, because HTTP is supported by all Internet browsers and servers. SOAP was created to accomplish this.
SOAP provides a way to communicate between applications running on different operating systems, with different technologies and programming languages.
SOAP became a W3C Recommendation 24. June 2003.
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