The SOAP for Java technology is just the latest of about half a dozen XML technologies that software companies have donated to Apache. SOAP for Java allows software developers using the Java programming language to use SOAP for its business e-commerce needs. It's valuable to further adoption. Microsoft, IBM and nine other firms recently submitted the blueprints for SOAP to a Web standards body called the World Wide Web Consortium . The SOAP technology is intended to solve a problem faced by businesses over competing Gartner analyst Mark Driver says IBM's SOAP for Java could potentially become an Internet standard for linking Web-based software. see commentary programming models.
Most software developers choose between two different ways to write business software.
Microsoft supports a model that guides businesses to use its Windows operating system. SOAP would serve as a common communications format that would connect the various programming models together, allowing businesses with different computing systems to link and conduct trades online, regardless of the model they use. As part of the Apache XML effort, IBM and other software firms previously donated their XML parsers, so Apache could take the best features of each and combine them into one product. A parser dissects and reads XML text, much like a Web browser reads HTML to generate Web pages on a computer. In March, Sun Microsystems was criticized for not donating its parser as promised.