Difference between SOAP and HTTP protocol?

Question

What is the difference between the SOAP and HTTP protocol. When we say \"SOAP over HTTP\", what does that mean.?

Answer 1

You can serve any content over HTTP such as HTML, images, sound, video, etc. SOAP is an XML-based encoding of messages that are typically sent over HTTP, but could be sent over SMTP or even FTP, although I've never seen such a system used in a production environment.

Just like HTTP sits on top of TCP/IP, SOAP sits on top of HTTP. Layers on top of layers...

If you look at a SOAP request, you can see both layers, with the HTTP headers at the top, followed by the SOAP message. From the w3schools SOAP tutorial:

---------  HTTP portion of the message ------ 
POST /InStock HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.org
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: nnn

---------  SOAP portion of the message ------ 




  
    IBM
  

More reading for you:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP