3. Principle and operation

SOAP's operation is simple and relatively similar to that of an HTTP server. In the remainder of this document, we'll concentrate on implementing SOAP over HTTP. For this reason, we will consider the architecture of a SOAP application to be that shown in figure 6 .

The client part of the application can be a Web browser (if possible capable of interpreting XML requests) or any client application. The HTTP server has been configured to activate a script (Servlet, JSP, ASP, CGI or other) on arrival of a SOAP request. This script acts as a gateway between the HTTP server and the service to be executed.