SOAP


SOAP is a messaging protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of web services in computer networks. Its purpose is to provide extensibility, neutrality, verbosity and independence. It uses XML Information Set for its message format, and relies on application layer protocols, most often Hypertext Transfer Protocol, although some legacy systems communicate over Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, for message negotiation and transmission.
SOAP allows developers to invoke processes running on disparate operating systems to authenticate, authorize, and communicate using Extensible Markup Language. Since Web protocols like HTTP are installed and running on 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:
SOAP has three major characteristics:
  1. extensibility
  2. neutrality
  3. independence
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, 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:
SOAP evolved as a successor of XML-RPC, though it borrows its transport and interaction neutrality from Web Service Addressing and the envelope/header/body from elsewhere.

History

SOAP was designed as an object-access protocol in 1998 by Dave Winer, Don Box, Bob Atkinson, and Mohsen Al-Ghosein for Microsoft, where Atkinson and Al-Ghosein were working. The specification was not made available until it was submitted to IETF 13 September 1999. According to Don Box, this was due to politics within Microsoft. Because of Microsoft's hesitation, Dave Winer shipped XML-RPC in 1998.
The submitted Internet Draft did not reach RFC status and is therefore not considered a "standard" as such. Version 1.1 of the specification was published as a W3C Note on 8 May 2000. Since version 1.1 did not reach W3C Recommendation status, it can not be considered a "standard" either. Version 1.2 of the specification, however, became a W3C recommendation on June 24, 2003.
The SOAP specification was maintained by the XML Protocol Working Group 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.
After SOAP was first introduced, it became the underlying layer of a more complex set of web services, based on Web Services Description Language, XML schema and Universal Description Discovery and Integration. These different services, especially UDDI, have proved to be of far less interest, but an appreciation of them gives a complete understanding of the expected role of SOAP compared to how web services have actually evolved.

SOAP terminology

SOAP specification can be broadly defined to be consisting of the following 3 conceptual components: protocol concepts, encapsulation concepts and network concepts.

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.
; 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.

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.
; 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..
; 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:
A SOAP message is an ordinary XML document containing the following elements:
ElementDescriptionRequired
EnvelopeIdentifies the XML document as a SOAP message.Yes
HeaderContains header information.No
BodyContains call and response information.Yes
FaultProvides information about errors that occurred while processing the message.No

Transport methods

Both SMTP and HTTP are valid application layer protocols used as transport for SOAP, but HTTP has gained wider acceptance as it works well with today's internet infrastructure; specifically, HTTP works well with network firewalls. SOAP may also be used over HTTPS with either simple or mutual authentication; this is the advocated WS-I method to provide web service security as stated in the WS-I Basic Profile 1.1.
This is a major advantage over other distributed protocols like GIOP/IIOP or DCOM, which are normally filtered by firewalls. SOAP over AMQP is yet another possibility that some implementations support. SOAP also has an advantage over DCOM that it is unaffected by security rights configured on the machines that require knowledge of both transmitting and receiving nodes. This lets SOAP be loosely coupled in a way that is not possible with DCOM. There is also the SOAP-over-UDP OASIS standard.

Message format

was chosen as the standard message format because of its widespread use by major corporations and open source development efforts. Typically, XML Information Set is serialized as XML. A wide variety of freely available tools significantly eases the transition to a SOAP-based implementation. The somewhat lengthy syntax of XML can be both a benefit and a drawback. While it promotes readability for humans, facilitates error detection, and avoids interoperability problems such as byte-order, it can slow processing speed and can be cumbersome. For example, CORBA, GIOP, ICE, and DCOM use much shorter, binary message formats. On the other hand, hardware appliances are available to accelerate processing of XML messages. Binary XML is also being explored as a means for streamlining the throughput requirements of XML.
XML messages by their self-documenting nature usually have more 'overhead' than actual data in contrast to earlier protocols where the overhead was usually a relatively small percentage of the overall message.
In financial messaging SOAP was found to result in a 2-4 times larger message than previous protocols FIX and CDR.
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 is requesting a stock price for AT&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"






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Technical critique

Advantages