What are advantages of SOAP?

Question

What are advantages of SOAP?

Answer

SOAP is both platform and language independent. SOAP separates the encoding and communications protocol from the runtime environment. Web service can retrieve or receive a SOAP user data from a remote service, and the source’s platform information is completely independent of each other. Everything can generate XML, from Perl scripts through C"" code to J2EE app servers. It uses XML to send and receive messages. It uses standard internet HTTP protocol. SOAP runs over HTTP; it eliminates firewall problems. When protocol HTTP is used as the protocol binding, an RPC call will be automatically assigned to an HTTP request, and the RPC response will be assigned to an HTTP reply. Compared to RMI, CORBA and DCOM, SOAP is very easy to use. SOAP acts as a protocol to move information in a distributed and decentralized environment. SOAP is independent of the transport protocol and can be used to coordinate different protocols.