A cynic might say SOAP is lightweight because it is missing so many features: transactions, security, garbage collection, language bindings, etc. It that sense, it cannot be seen as a contender against heavyweights such as CORBA, COM+ and RMI+EJB.
Of course, this was presumably *not* the reason the authors of SOAP 1.1 called SOAP lightweight. Instead, I would guess it had more to do with the brevity of the spec and the ease with which an individual or small team could create a SOAP implementation. Focusing on the lightweight label is, I think, a fairly useless exercise. For that matter, focusing on SOAP alone is not particularly useful. There are now many pieces to the Web services puzzle. The SOAP spec provides information about the format of SOAP's XML messages and how HTTP can be used to transport these. WSDL provides a means to define and exchange metadata about services, both the message formats and transport protocols used. These build on the XML and XML Schema specifications. UDDI provides directory services to allow services to be located. There are other specifications being developed, such as those in the GXA framework that Microsoft is supporting: WS-Security, WS-Routing, WS-Attachments and DIME. On 9 Jun 2003 at 4:15, aliya khan wrote: > > > Why soap is called alight weight protocol? > Aliya > > _________________________________________________________________ > Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online > http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 > > Scott Nichol Do not reply directly to this e-mail address, as it is filtered to only receive e-mail from specific mailing lists.
