"1. Can the SOAP functions work from a servlet?"
Sure - in fact the Apache SOAP package has several examples
"2. Can the SOAP functions work from an applet (If I use Swing for my GUI) ?"
A SOAP message is just plain HTML so there is no reason an applet could not talk to a SOAP server - remember you would have to make the XML parser available to the applet. Swing or not-Swing makes no difference.
Loads of SOAP references at:
http://www.lanw.com/books/javasoap/soapref.htm Bill
[This message has been edited by William Brogden (edited June 28, 2001).]