SOAP

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SOAP (formerly an

SOAP allows developers to invoke processes running on different operating systems (such as Windows, macOS, and Linux) to authenticate, authorize, and communicate using Extensible Markup Language (XML). Since Web protocols like HTTP are installed and running on practically all operating systems, SOAP allows clients to invoke web services and receive responses independent of language and platforms.

Characteristics

SOAP provides the Messaging Protocol layer of a web services protocol stack for web services. It is an XML-based protocol consisting of three parts:

• an envelope, which defines the message structure^[1] and how to process it
• a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined datatypes
• a convention for representing procedure calls and responses

SOAP has three major characteristics:

1. extensibility (security and WS-Addressing are among the extensions under development)
2. neutrality (SOAP can operate over any protocol such as
   SMTP, TCP, UDP
   )
3. independence (SOAP allows for any programming model)

As an example of what SOAP procedures can do, an application can send a SOAP request to a server that has web services enabled—such as a real-estate price database—with the parameters for a search. The server then returns a SOAP response (an XML-formatted document) with the resulting data, e.g., prices, location, features. Since the generated data comes in a standardized machine-parsable format, the requesting application can then integrate it directly.

The SOAP architecture consists of several layers of specifications for:

• message format
• Message Exchange Patterns
  (MEP)
• underlying transport protocol bindings
• message processing models
• protocol extensibility

SOAP evolved as a successor of XML-RPC, though it borrows its transport and interaction neutrality from Web Service Addressing^[2] and the envelope/header/body from elsewhere (probably from WDDX).^{[citation needed]}

History

SOAP was designed as an object-access protocol and released as

The SOAP specification[9] was maintained by the XML Protocol Working Group^[10] of the World Wide Web Consortium until the group was closed 10 July 2009. SOAP originally stood for "Simple Object Access Protocol" but version 1.2 of the standard dropped this acronym.^[11]

After SOAP was first introduced, it became the underlying layer of a more complex set of

SOAP terminology

SOAP specification can be broadly defined to be consisting of the following three conceptual components: protocol concepts, encapsulation concepts and network concepts.^[12]

Protocol concepts

SOAP

This is a set of rules formalizing and governing the format and processing rules for information exchanged between a SOAP sender and a SOAP receiver.

SOAP nodes

These are physical/logical machines with processing units which are used to transmit/forward, receive and process SOAP messages. These are analogous to nodes in a network.

SOAP roles

Over the path of a SOAP message, all nodes assume a specific role. The role of the node defines the action that the node performs on the message it receives. For example, a role "none" means that no node will process the SOAP header in any way and simply transmit the message along its path.

SOAP protocol binding

A SOAP message needs to work in conjunction with other protocols to be transferred over a network. For example, a SOAP message could use TCP as a lower layer protocol to transfer messages. These bindings are defined in the SOAP protocol binding framework.^[13]

SOAP features

SOAP provides a messaging framework only. However, it can be extended to add features such as reliability, security etc. There are rules to be followed when adding features to the SOAP framework.

SOAP module

A collection of specifications regarding the semantics of SOAP header to describe any new features being extended upon SOAP. A module needs to realize zero or more features. SOAP requires modules to adhere to prescribed rules.^[14]

Data encapsulation concepts

SOAP message

Represents the information being exchanged between 2 SOAP nodes.

SOAP envelope

It is the enclosing element of an XML message identifying it as a SOAP message.

SOAP header block

A SOAP header can contain more than one of these blocks, each being a discrete computational block within the header. In general, the SOAP role information is used to target nodes on the path. A header block is said to be targeted at a SOAP node if the SOAP role for the header block is the name of a role in which the SOAP node operates. (ex: A SOAP header block with role attribute as ultimateReceiver is targeted only at the destination node which has this role. A header with a role attribute as next is targeted at each intermediary as well as the destination node.)

SOAP header

A collection of one or more header blocks targeted at each SOAP receiver.

SOAP body

Contains the body of the message intended for the SOAP receiver. The interpretation and processing of SOAP body is defined by header blocks.

SOAP fault

In case a SOAP node fails to process a SOAP message, it adds the fault information to the SOAP fault element. This element is contained within the SOAP body as a child element.

Message sender and receiver concepts

SOAP sender

The node that transmits a SOAP message.

SOAP receiver

The node receiving a SOAP message. (Could be an intermediary or the destination node).

SOAP message path

The path consisting of all the nodes that the SOAP message traversed to reach the destination node.

Initial SOAP sender

This is the node which originated the SOAP message to be transmitted. This is the root of the SOAP message path.

SOAP intermediary

All the nodes in between the SOAP originator and the intended SOAP destination. It processes the SOAP header blocks targeted at it and acts to forward a SOAP message towards an ultimate SOAP receiver.

Ultimate SOAP receiver

The destination receiver of the SOAP message. This node is responsible for processing the message body and any header blocks targeted at it.

Specification

The SOAP specification defines the messaging framework, which consists of:

• The SOAP processing model, defining the rules for processing a SOAP message^[15]
• The SOAP extensibility model defining the concepts of SOAP features and SOAP modules^[15]
• The SOAP underlying protocol binding framework describing the rules for defining a binding to an underlying protocol that can be used for exchanging SOAP messages between SOAP nodes^[15]
• The SOAP message construct defining the structure of a SOAP message^[15]

SOAP building blocks

A SOAP message is an ordinary XML document containing the following elements:

Transport methods

Both

In financial messaging SOAP was found to result in a 2–4 times larger message than previous protocols FIX (Financial Information Exchange) and CDR (Common Data Representation).^[18]

XML Information Set does not have to be serialized in XML. For instance, CSV and JSON XML-infoset representations exist. There is also no need to specify a generic transformation framework. The concept of SOAP bindings allows for specific bindings for a specific application. The drawback is that both the senders and receivers have to support this newly defined binding.

Example message (encapsulated in HTTP)

The message below requests a stock price for AT&T (stock ticker symbol "T").

POST /InStock HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.org
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 299
SOAPAction: "http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:m="http://www.example.org">
  <soap:Header>
  </soap:Header>
  <soap:Body>
    <m:GetStockPrice>
      <m:StockName>T</m:StockName>
    </m:GetStockPrice>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Technical critique

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Advantages

• SOAP's neutrality characteristic explicitly makes it suitable for use with any transport protocol. Implementations often use HTTP as a transport protocol, but other popular transport protocols can be used. For example, SOAP can also be used over SMTP,
  JMS^[19][20] and message queues
  .
• SOAP, when combined with HTTP post/response exchanges, tunnels easily through existing firewalls and proxies, and consequently doesn't require modifying the widespread computing and communication infrastructures that exist for processing HTTP post/response exchanges.
• SOAP has available to it all the facilities of XML, including easy internationalization and extensibility with XML Namespaces.

• When using standard implementation and the default SOAP/HTTP binding, the XML infoset is serialized as XML. To improve performance for the special case of XML with embedded binary objects, the Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism was introduced.
• When relying on HTTP as a transport protocol and not using
  Enterprise Service Bus
  , the roles of the interacting parties are fixed. Only one party (the client) can use the services of the other.
• SOAP is less "simple" than the name would suggest. The verbosity of the protocol, slow parsing speed of XML, and lack of a standardized interaction model led to the dominance of services using the
  REST
  .
• Being protocol-agnostic, SOAP is unable to take advantage of protocol-specific features and optimizations such as
  REST's Uniform Interface or caching – instead having to reimplement them (as with WS-Addressing
  ).

References

Further reading

• Benoît Marchal, "Soapbox: Why I'm using SOAP", IBM
• Uche Ogbuji, "Tutorial: XML messaging with SOAP", Principal Consultant, Fourthought, Inc.

External links

• W3C SOAP page
• SOAP Version 1.2 specification
• Create SOAP Message in Java