SOAP is an XML-based messaging protocol that allows messages and components to be executed via an HTTP connection. The SOAP specification can be found at http://www.w3.org/tr/soap. By using the SOAP specification, applications can easily communicate and execute commands remotely. Because SOAP is XML-based, the applications can be on disparate systems. One application doesn’t care about which operating system the other application runs on or which language it was developed in. As long as the SOAP specification is supported, the two applications can exchange messages. Those messages will contain the appropriate commands, parameters, and results.