Sim­ple Object Access Pro­to­col

Glossary term descrip­tion
  • Also known as
  • SOAP

The Sim­ple Object Access Pro­to­col (SOAP ) is a XML -based pro­to­col to request or receive infor­ma­tion from peer com­put­ers in a decen­tral­ized, dis­trib­uted net­work.

SOAP is used by web appli­ca­tion APIs and defines the min­i­mal set of con­ven­tions that are needed to com­mu­ni­cate with these APIs using XML and HTTP .

Using SOAP APIs allows to invoke actions on remote com­put­ers. These actions can be run­ning meth­ods or ser­vices on servers, as well as request­ing objects from or send­ing them to another com­puter.

SOAP lays out the XML vocab­u­lary needed to spec­ify method para­me­ters, return val­ues, and excep­tions.