Note : refer to the follow-on tool Apache Axis

Apache SOAP ("Simple Object Access Protocol") is an implementation of the SOAP submission to W3C. It is based on, and supersedes, the IBM SOAP4J implementation.

From the draft W3C specification: SOAP is a lightweight protocol for exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is an XML based protocol that consists of three parts: an envelope that defines a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it, a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined datatypes, and a convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses.

Features :

• Supports most of the SOAP v1.1 specification.



• Supports the SOAP Messages with Attachments W3C Note.



• Provides server-side infrastructure for deploying, managing and running SOAP enabled services.



• Provides client-side API for invoking SOAP services.



• Release includes full source under the Apache Software License.



• Supports three encoding styles: SOAP v1.1 Encoding, Literal XML and XMI.



• XMI encoding (available when using Java 1.2.2) supports automatic marshalling and unmarshalling of arbitrary objects.



• SOAP encoding: built-in support is provided for encoding/decoding primitive types, Strings, arbitrary JavaBeans (using reflection) and 1-dimensional arrays of these types. For other types user can hand-write encoder/decoder and register with XML-SOAP runtime.



• Literal XML encoding: allows one to send XML elements (DOM org.w3c.dom.Element objects) as parameters by embedding the literal XML serialization of the DOM tree. No code needs to be written to support this (see the addressbook demo to see a sample use of it).



• Supports messaging and RPC over two transports: HTTP and SMTP.



• Supports authoring services in scripting languages.