> Ranjit Goray wrote:
>
> SOAP Questions :
>
>
> 1.How is SOAP different from the Ariba and Commerce One Standards of
> cXML etc?
>
SOAP is an encoding and transport mechanism. The data payload could be
cXML, or any other datatype which can be encoded as XML (there is also a
spec for binary attachments).
> 2.What is the relationship between COM Plus and SOAP?
>
I believe that .Net will allow you to make DCOM calls over SOAP, but
there is no direct relationship.
> 3.What is the relationship between ebXML and SOAP?
>
ebXML is a higer level specification, covering things like data formats
(porting EDI to XML) and security.
> 4.At what layer in the OSI stack does SOAP run?
>
I guess it would be at the application layer. The actual tcp protocol
is implementation dependent, but the most common protocol is http.
> 5.What is a Client Stub/ Server Stub? (In RPC)
>
Stubs mask the complexities of distributed execution. Most
compilers/interpreters assume that all program elements exist in the
same memory space. A stub is a representation (proxy) of the remote
object in local memory.
> 6.How is SOAP different from traditional RPC? If I ran traditional RPC
> over HTTP with XML as the encoding mechanism would this be SOAP??
>
There is another spec, called XML-RPC, which does this. SOAP is much
more loosly coupled than traditional RPC.
> 7.Is SOAP able to handle binaries? Other XML protocols cXML etc
> usually don’t?
>
You can send an array of bytes as an attachment. It is recommended that
the implementations use base64 encoding to transport these bytes.
> 8.Does Different SOAP Implementations mean that a Microsoft SOAP
> –enabled application and an Apache SOAP-enabled application will not
> be able to talk with each other?
>
No, MS-SOAP and Apache SOAP can interoperate. It's sort of the whole
idea.
For more information on SOAP, you should check out the spec at
http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12 and the Apache documentation at
http://xml.apache.org/soap/docs/index.html. For MS-Soap and Apache SOAP
interoperability, check
http://xml.apache.org/soap/docs/guide/interop.html.
Hope this helps,
Ram Sadasiv
