What's the difference between XI-XML and XI-SOAP ?

[Former Member]

I guess, XI-XML is a kind of format, XI-SOAP is a protocol, is it correct ?

[Former Member]

Hi,

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a W3C initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand. XML is great for information exchange, and can easily be extended to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.

(Simple Object Access Protocol) The standard for web services messages. Based on XML, SOAP defines an envelope format and various rules for describing its contents. Seen (with WSDL and UDDI) as one of the three foundation standards of web services, it is the preferred protocol for exchanging web services, but by no means the only one; proponents of REST say that it adds unnecessary complexity

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a way for a program running in one kind of operating system (such as Windows 2000) to communicate with a progam in the same or another kind of an operating system (such as Linux) by using the World Wide Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)and its Extensible Markup Language (XML) as the mechanisms for information exchange. Since Web protocols are installed and available for use by all major operating system platforms, HTTP and XML provide an already at-hand solution to the problem of how programs running under different operating systems in a network can communicate with each other. SOAP specifies exactly how to encode an HTTP header and an XML file so that a program in one computer can call a program in another computer and pass it information. It also specifies how the called program can return a response.

An advantage of SOAP is that program calls are much more likely to get through firewall servers that screen out requests other than those for known applications (through the designated port mechanism). Since HTTP requests are usually allowed through firewalls, programs using SOAP to communicate can be sure that they can communicate with programs anywhere

Regards,

Suryanarayana

[Former Member]

HI

XSD: XML Schema definition. It is recommended by w3c and specifies how to formally describe elements in an xml document.

SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol. Provides a means of formatting data and transferring so that senders and receivers on different operating systems can jointly understand the data.

SAP XI abandons the point-to-point integration approach, favoring instead a model that features loosely coupled applications communicating via XML/SOAP/HTTP.

The XI is used to exchange XML messages in an implementation of the SOAP protocol.

cheers

[Former Member]

Hi Denny,

XSD - xml schema which defines data structure

XML - data based on a XSD ( XML is data container )

SOAP - protocol to connect 2 different systems.

- Satish

[Former Member]

Hi Dennys,

I think both xi-xml and xi-soap are protocols. xi-xml is nothing but XML which is a markup language. whereas xi-soap is a protocol which xi can understand. Thats the reason we use adapters whose work is to convert a message taken from the application system to xi-soap format which xi can understand to process the message in the integration engine.

I hope this will clear.

Reward points if found helpful

Thanks & Regards,

Bharath.

[Former Member]

Hi Dennys

XML

XML provides a standards-based method for describing data. XML is used extensively in building and consuming Web services. XML has the ability to describe data that is highly interoperable among many different systems on the Internet. Using the basic elements of XML we can define simple and complex data types and relationships. XML promotes the ability of Web services to communicate their data efficiently and effectively. It's this XML that ensures a consistent and accurate interpretation of the data when the service and consumer reside on different platforms.

You can have a overview of XML in the "Essential XML" section of this site.

SOAP

Let's take a look what SOAP is and why it is related to .NET. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a lightweight protocol for exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It's an industry-standard message format that enables message-based communications for Web services. It's XML based and consists of three parts, an envelop that defines a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it, a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined data types and a convention for representing remote procedure calls (RPC). The capability of SOAP to provide a modular packaging model and encoding mechanisms for encoding data within modules allows it to be used over multiple protocols with a variety of different programming models.

There are optional parts of the SOAP specification and one optional part defines what an HTTP message that contains a SOAP message looks like. This HTTP binding is important as HTTP is supported by almost all operating systems. The HTTP binding is optional, but almost all SOAP implementations support it as it's the only standardized protocol for SOAP. For this reason, there's a common misconception that SOAP requires HTTP. Some implementations support MSMQ, MQ Series, SMTP, or TCP/IP transports, but almost all current XML Web services use HTTP because it is ubiquitous.

A major source of confusion when getting started with SOAP is the difference between the SOAP specification and the many implementations of the SOAP specification. Most people who use SOAP don't write SOAP messages directly but use a SOAP toolkit to create and parse the SOAP messages. These toolkits generally translate function calls from some kind of language to a SOAP message. For example, the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit 2.0 translates COM function calls to SOAP and the Apache Toolkit translates JAVA function calls to SOAP. The types of function calls and the data types of the parameters supported vary with each SOAP implementation, so a function that works with one toolkit may not work with another. This isn't a limitation of SOAP but rather of the particular implementation you are using.

By far the most compelling feature of SOAP is that it has been implemented on many different platforms. This means that SOAP can be used to link disparate systems within and without an organization. Many attempts have been made in the past to come up with a common communications protocol that could be used for systems integration but none of them have had the widespread adoption that SOAP has. That's because SOAP is much smaller and simpler to implement than many of the previous protocols. For example, DCE and CORBA took years to implement. SOAP, however, can use existing XML Parsers and HTTP libraries to do most of the hard work, so a SOAP implementation can be completed in a matter of months. This is why there are more than 70 SOAP implementations available. SOAP obviously doesn't do everything that DCE or CORBA do, but the lack of complexity in exchange for features is what makes SOAP so readily available.

Regards

Abhishek mahajan

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