SOAP Box Derby and the bablefish

Just like xml the basic idea was nice and KISS. And it was called xml-rpc, and it was a bit less flexible one could wish if a fairy is asking. Regrettably the fairy was on holiday, so microsoft and some other guys misunderstood that they were meant.

And they implemented a simple protocol with all the bells and whistles that XML offers you on its way to become SGML again.
To keep a bit of simplicity left, they set the object orientation aside.
But there was enough complexity left for everyone: wsdl, namespaces, uddi and the like.

That added the flexiblity that makes perl, mod_rewrite or sendmail hard to maintain to SOAP: there are more than 100 ways to do everything - that means for example 10 ways to define a complex type in wsdl and 10 ways to create some soap xml transmission for each definition.

And there we are:

• DOTNET Supports 4 wsdl ways and 2 soap ways.
• PEAR::Soap supports 3 wsdl ways and 4 soap ways.
• gsoap supports 5 wsdl ways and 1 soap way
• delphi::soap 6 wsdl ways and 5 soap ways

So you have to create a wsdl definition everybody understands, and for every server/ client a soap format that they get either.

So if you do soap with different platforms - and that is what is intended for - have some soap-tolerating bablefish at your fingertips.

Or simply reverse engineer the kind of soap/wsdl googles uses, just like we did.