SOAP will be the universal "application glue" for tomorrow's widely distributed systems. It's simple, based on widely deployed standards such as XML and HTTP, and will enable virtually any business software to communicate across the Internet. SOAP: Cross Platform Internet Development Using XML offers a practical, hands-on introduction to SOAP that demonstrates how to leverage this technology on multiple platforms, using virtually every leading programming language. Seely begins by reviewing the history of distributed computing, and demonstrating how SOAP solves distributed computing problems that DCOM and CORBA failed to solve. He presents basic introductions to XML, and then to SOAP's syntax -- including SOAP's use of HTTP headers, the SOAP payload, error handling, data types, encoding structures, and more. You'll walk through building a simple SOAP server for Windows; then discover how SOAP can be extended to support multiple platforms and programming languages. SOAP: Cross Platform Internet Development Using XML contains detailed chapters on utilizing SOAP with each of five leading programming languages: C++, Perl, Python, Visual Basic, and Java. The book concludes by reviewing today's leading SOAP servers. For all developers and system integrators constructing Internet applications, applications written in multiple programming languages, or applications that integrate diverse enterprise systems; and for any IT professional evaluating SOAP.
