d protocol was intended for a web-based enterprise management and scenarios of network management on the web, now XML protocols have gained more accep- tance. SOAP is the protocol suggested in MTOSI (multi-technology operations system interface) defined by TeleManagement Forum (TMF) and NETCONF is hailed as the next generation network management protocol. 6.7 Overview of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) SOAP is an XML-based lightweight protocol developed by XML protocol working group of W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). SOAP is intended to exchange structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It was mainly designed for Internet communication. Remote procedure calls (RPC) used for communication between objects like DCOM and CORBA were not suited for the Internet. Firewalls and proxy servers usually block RPC and hence it was not used for Internet due to compatibility and security problems. SOAP supports XML- based RPC and HTTP supported by all Internet browsers and servers made a good pair for Internet communication. SOAP RPC can pass firewalls and proxy servers as the SOAP envelope is encapsulated in the HTTP payload (see Figure 6.1). SOAP over HTTP HTTP headers HTTP body with SOAP envelope SOAP headers SOAP body Figure 6.1 SOAP envelope encapsulated in the HTTP payload. Fundamentals of EMS, NMS and OSS/BSS SOAP uses XML to define an extensible messaging framework that can work over a variety of underlying protocols, independent of the particular programming model used and other implementation specific semantics. Advantages of SOAP: 1. Platform independent 2. Independent of language used for implementation 3. Inherits all the advantages of an XML-based protocol 4. Can easily get around firewalls Disadvantages of SOAP: The performance issues of XML-based protocol are applicable to SOAP also It does not provide any activation mechanism There is no support for garbage collection of managed objects It does not implement any security as part of the framework SOAP is inherently stateless and i