- Introduction
- SOAP APIs
- Apache SOAP
- The Microsoft SOAP Toolkit
- Additional Resources
The Microsoft SOAP Toolkit
The Microsoft SOAP Toolkit is essentially a COM component used in conjunction with the Microsoft XML Parser. Unlike the Apache SOAP library, Microsoft's requires the use of a WSDL description to make a function call. For instance, the following code snippet represents a SOAP call to our getAllTeams() SOAP method:
Dim teamList As IXMLDOMNodeList Dim TeamClient As New SoapClient TeamClient.mssoapinit "wsdlfile.wsdl" Set teamList = TeamClient.getAllTeams()
As you can see, the SoapClient object's mssoapinit() method is used to set up a connection with the SOAP server. From the information defined in the WSDL input file, the client-side SOAP object "understands" what methods are available on the server and how to call them. If your server SOAP functionality is constructed as a Microsoft COM object, you can use the WSDL Generator tool included with the SOAP Toolkit to auto-construct your application's WSDL file. If you didn't build the server using COM, other WSDL generators (not including vi and Notepad!) are available from other companies, including a popular tool from IBM.