Since interoperation between the technology islands is troublesome at best, an individual company must decide upon which single technology they will base all their applications. The explosion in popularity of the public Internet over the past five years was mainly centered around the interaction of Joe User with Mega Corp. and Joe Public with Joe Sixpack, otherwise known by the monikers B2C and C2C. HTML and HTTP were this fire s fuel. Applications reach across the Internet to band together in forming an aggregation of cooperating software components. All these providers could support an Internet interface into their applications for access by external applications that need to request quotes, place orders, cancel orders, etc. The poor interoperability of existing middleware technologies will not support the needs of the B2B Internet.
SOAP provides interoperability between competing middleware technologies, across the Internet.
The transport protocol is HTTP, chosen because of its firewall friendly nature. UserLand, Develop Mentor and Microsoft drafted the first SOAP proposal. IBM has endorsed revision 1.1. Sun isn't supporting it, but will eventually have to follow along . Charney Loyalty Loyalty is a constant refrain in the give and take of hiring and being hired.