SOAP - A Protocol, Not a Technology

ByAnkush Jain| Last Updated On Wednesday, Feb 21, 2018

WCF

Disclaimer: I am a consultant at Amazon Web Services, and this is my personal blog. The opinions expressed here are solely mine and do not reflect the views of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Any statements made should not be considered official endorsements or statements by AWS.

I have arranged this article in few key points & each point will help you in understanding what SOAP actually is.

• SOAP is just a Communication or Messaging Protocol not a technology.

• As I said, SOAP is a protocol, it means that SOAP defines a set of rules which we must follow while creating messages for communication. (Message - Understand this term in last point)

• SOAP uses XML based formats for sending & receiving messages.

• SOAP is platform independent because it is just a protocol not a technology.

• SOAP is an XML based protocol or specifications for messaging between consumer and provider or client and host. i.e. Here client could be a .Net Application and host could be a WCF Service.

• WCF uses SOAP protocol on the top of HTTP or TCP or any other protocol.

• In SOAP world, Message or Messaging keywords are used quite often. A Message is nothing but just a piece of information. For example, An XML request to WCF service will be a called a Message, the response which we get from server will also be called a Message. And these messages follow SOAP protocol, hence they will be in XML and will be in a particular format as per SOAP guidelines.

You can find more detail about SOAP here.