SOAP service vs HTTP Service

[Former Member]

Hi All,

What is the main advantage of using a SOAP service over an HTTP service?

regrds,

Piyush

[david_guess2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Piyush,

I assume you are asking for the advantages of SOAP vs REST web services.

The main advantages of SOAP are:

- Easy to build and consume (in SAP)

- Rigid. Type checking, contracts

- Supported by SAP tools

The main advantages of REST are:

- Lightweight

- Human readable results

- No toolkits required

Cheers,

David

[profitlich42]

Hi Piyush,

please clarify your question. Do you mean the difference between RESTful Web Services vs. SOAP Service which are transported via http?

regards,

Andreas

[Former Member]

Hello Floks,

Client requests and web service responses are transmitted as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages over HTTP to enable a completely interoperable exchange between clients and web services, all running on different platforms and at various locations on the Internet. HTTP is a familiar request-and response standard for sending messages over the Internet, and SOAP is an XML-based protocol that follows the HTTP request-and-response model.

Regards,

Ravi.

[Former Member]

Hi,

A SOAP service is an HTTP service.

An HTTP service is not always a SOAP service.

What is the point of your question ?

Regards,

Olivier

[Former Member]

Hi,

To be more precise, I am referring to SOAP over HTTP service VS HTTP service.

regards,

Piyush

[Former Member]

What do you call an HTTP service ?

It is a very generic word which can apply to a lot of completely different concepts.

Your question is, for me, comparing apples to fruits...

Regards,

Olivier

[Former Member]

Nice Answer Oliever,

That gives a very explanation "Comparing Apple to Fruits".

This mean SOAP being flavor to HTML!

-Kaleem.

[Former Member]

Hi Olivier,

Finally I couldn't resist on commenting on your initial response:

A SOAP service is an HTTP service.

This is a bit misleading as the correct phrase in my opinion would be <em>a SOAP service can be implemented using an HTTP binding</em>. The SOAP specification lists the requirements for a binding, e.g. see in version [1.2|http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12] section [4. SOAP Protocol Binding Framework|http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-soap12-part1-20070427/#transpbindframew]. Other bindings are possible, e.g. [SOAP over smtp/e-mail|http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-soap12-email-20020703]. Admittedly though, probably almost everybody just uses SOAP over http...

@Kaleem: I'd rephrase also your comment and say that <em>http is a flavor of a SOAP binding</em>.

Sorry for nitpicking...

Cheers, harald

[Former Member]

Hi Harald,

Of course you are right but I did not want to make the thing more complicated for someone who seems not very familiar with the concepts.

In real life I've never seen other bindings then HTTP for SOAP but I just see what is done in my company...

Regards,

Olivier

[Former Member]

Hi Olivier,

Looking at the way the question is phrased I'd say it doesn't hurt to point out lots of references to lengthy standards and other documentation. To me the original one-line posted indicates that the question seems to have taken the shortest path from the ears of the poster to his fingers for typing the question on SDN. Sorry, for being offensive, but it would be nice to see some thinking/research before people post questions. And here obviously a simple web search would've turned up enough matches to prevent such question or asking something a bit more differentiated.

I'd left it unanswered, but I must admit I couldn't resist posting a silly and pretty irrelevant response (as I like to have all my facts straight)...

Cheers, harald