SOAP speeds binary data across the Net

By Alun Williams

Posted on 28 Jan 2005 at 14:53

The body that governs Internet standards is bidding to speed the transmission of large amounts of binary data over the Net.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released three W3C Recommendations to improve SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)-based Web services. These involve the inclusion of binary data along with XML documents (XML-binary Optimized Packaging, XOP), improved addressing for SOAP messages (Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism, MTOM) and the ability to access cached copies of external data (Resource Representation SOAP Header Block functionality, RRSHB).

'Web Services have just become faster and more usable,' promised Yves Lafon, W3C Team Contact for the XMLP Working Group. '[by] enabling a more efficient way to serialise and transmit a SOAP message (XOP and MTOM), and by sending all the data needed to process the message, even when the data would not be readily available (RRSHB).

You can find the three new Web Services Recommendations on the W3C site: XML-binary Optimized Packaging (XOP), SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) and Resource Representation SOAP Header Block (RRSHB).

Backed by the likes of Microsoft and IBM, SOAP uses use XML to present the 'logic' of data across the communication networks. For example, it is used by Web-based applications to encode an 'object' of information, such as identity information, car specifications, data records and any other logical grouping of data.

Work on improving data transmissions has been continuing since the last SOAP standard, v1.2, was ratified back in June 2003 - SOAP 1.2 becomes a W3C Recommendation.