SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol?

Question

SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol

I find some Difficulty in understanding the expansion of SOAP.

• First thing, is it really Simple?
• Second thing, is it used to access Objects?
• Third thing, If it used to access objects then what are the objects it can access?
• Fourth thing, Is it purely object access protocol?

Help me to understand it more clearly.

Answer 1

No, it's not particularly simple, IMO. It means slightly different things to different people (message passing? RPC? object access? all of the above?) and implementations often have sticking points when they talk to each other.

Pete Lacey has a very humorous dialogue on this...