SOAP is based on popular standards and is platform and programming language independent. Companies are free to choose platforms that are best suited to solving their problems regardless of the operating system. Firewalls are no longer a barrier to communicating over the Internet. Enables heterogeneous interoperability of data, components, business processes and applications over the Internet. Simple and easy to implement.
SOAP concentrates on the specific task of executing procedures on a remote computer.
I think SOAP is an important piece of the technology to finally create distributed component based applications on the Internet. With the remote procedure call capabilities provided by SOAP people can now create applications talking to each other instead. About ActiveState ActiveState is at the forefront of Open Source software, providing products and services for all popular Operating Systems including Windows, Linux and Solaris. ActiveState's key technology platforms are Perl, the Internet's most popular programming language and Python, a user-friendly scripting language. ActiveState solutions provide enterprise-wide deployment of Perl, improved programmer productivity, and seamless integration with other technologies.