The web services architecture provides a new way to think about and implement application-to-application integration and interoperability that makes the development platform irrelevant. Two applications, regardless of operating system, programming language, or any other technical implementation detail, communicate using XML messages over open Internet protocols such as HTTP or SMTP. The Simple Open Access Protocol (SOAP) is a specification that details how to encode that information and has become the messaging protocol of choice for Web services.Programming Web Services with SOAP is a detailed guide to using SOAP and other leading web services standards--WSDL (Web Service Description Language), and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integra...