SOAP is at the heart of all Web services as the way to deliver messages
between two applications or systems. SOAP in its various versions is well
known and often discussed. However, SOAP on its own is often not enough,
especially if the message is sent outside the enterprise where privacy of the
message content and reliable message delivery become much more important.
Even security and reliability may not be sufficient. You may also need to
limit the life of a message so that it "expires" at some point, or specify
the type of long-running business transaction of which the message is part.
Efforts are under way to provide these and other useful features in various
SOAP standards efforts.
Why Do These Standards Matter?
Standards matter because standards lead to better soluti... (more)
If the content of a SOAP message is not understood or the recipient of a
message does not know what to do with it when they get it, then using Web
services for business, even with extensions for reliable delivery and
security, will just not work.
To solve this problem you not only need to define how to "deliver the
message" (see WSJ, Volume 3, Issue 11), you also need to define what the ... (more)