As relayed by Nelson Minar, author of two of the Google APIs;

From my experience nothing interoperates well, even in the basic SOAP stack. rpc/encoded used to work OK, within its limitations but now that’s deprecated it’s not a realistic option for new services. So you’re stuck with document/literal where practice isn’t great.

And remember, this is just SOAP 1.1 a spec that is five years old, and which (apparently) requires clarification upon clarification… but still can’t seem to get it right.

Ouch. Even if you like the (presumed) architecture of Web services, this would seem reason enough to give pause and to motivate consideration of a Web based solution, no?

Update; based on some offline feedback, I should clarify that the problem Nelson talks about with the doc/lit encoding isn’t specific to Web services and could also be encountered in a Web based solution. But my intent here is just to throw cold water on the general concept of “SOAP = interoperability”, and to point out that the largest distributed application ever created by mankind – the Web – got that way because it truly embraced interop, and wasn’t just paying it lip service.

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