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October 30, 2001 Web Services -- SOAP  Tips: October 2001
Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
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You call Web services with messages that are written in the SOAP format. SOAP is a specification that defines the XML format for messages. A well-formed XML fragment enclosed in a couple of SOAP elements is a SOAP message. SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. You could print out a SOAP message, fax it to a remote location, and type it into the remote machine without violating the SOAP standard. More likely, you would send a SOAP message inside an HTTP message. There's no standard for how a SOAP message is carried, and SOAP doesn't care what the transport is. The SOAP specification defines what an HTTP message containing a SOAP message must look like.
The SOAP specification includes three major parts. The required part defines the structure of an XML document that can be used to exchange data between applications. Section 5 defines a way to encode programming language data types in XML. Such a message is called a section-5 encoded SOAP message. A regular message that contains an XML document is called a literal SOAP message. Section 7 of the
SOAP definition is also optional. It deals with RPC (remote procedure calls), where the message is sent synchronously. You call a Web service's function and wait to check the return code. The default specification is for asynchronous calls. You can call Web services from JavaScript. Visit columns 96 through 106 for further information on calling Web services in Internet Explorer.
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