SOAP

The SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) specification was originally developed by Microsoft. SOAP was designed as a key enabler for Microsoft's vision of integrated, programmable Web services through XML. SOAP was designed to enable the exchange of XML messages so that services could easily describe their capabilities and allow any other service, application or device on the Internet to easily invoke those capabilities. SOAP is an XML-based mechanism designed to bridge different object models over the Internet and provide an open mechanism for Web services to communicate with one another.

In September 1999, Microsoft submitted SOAP to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for industry wide comment and for open standardization.  Then in in May of 2000, Microsoft submitted SOAP 1.1 to W3C.  In July 2001, W3C released the first working draft of SOAP 1.2.

SOAP has had tremendous success as a "de facto" standard.  But now SOAP has moved into the world of W3C.  So the eventual evolution of SOAP remains to be seen.  Data transport is central to the success of modern computing.  XML is clearly the preferred format for data processing on the Web.  But the challenge for the sender and the receiver to agree on a universal transfer protocol at the application level or layer remains. W3C's XML Protocol Activity was formed to address this problem. Following the development of requirements and soliciting feedback of the broad Web community, Working Drafts for SOAP Version 1.2 and the XML Protocol Abstract Model are the next logical  step in this evolution.