what is SOAP

[sidd mailk]

hi all,
can anyone explain me in simple word
what exactly is soap.
bye
sidds

[Suneel Setlur]

SOAP is a lightweight protocol for exchange of information on a distributed environment.
Check this link here
Suneel
[This message has been edited by Suneel Setlur (edited September 18, 2001).]

[Mark Spritzler]

I think the best explanation is that SOAP is XML on steriods. What I mean by that, is that is used for Interop between operating systems and programming Languages.
In a SOAP file is not only the data, but also information about the complete object, like methods and such. It is used in conjunction with a WSDL file, which has the metadata of the object.
It is similar to think about it in terms of Serialization and/or RMI. It is lso similar to IDL in Corba.
Hope this sheds some light for you. I am not an expert in SOAP, but I went to a VB.net class last week, and they discussed it, and we did a little lab on it. So that is what my experience in SOAP is.
Mark