Summary
The Internet sends data via a series of transport protocols for everything from e-mail to Web pages. More important, SOAP itself is transport independent! The existence of transport protocols is fundamental to the existence of Web services. Without a solid set of interoperable transport protocols from which to choose, Web services would have a much more difficult time existing. And, by having almost any transport protocol available, Web services can live in a very heterogeneous world.
Following are some key ideas to take away from this chapter:
Transport protocols provide the basis for sending data over networks. They are used both on LANs and over the Internet itself. SOAP is transport independent, although the specification does describe how to use it with HTTP. The TcpClient and TcpListener classes are useful for connection-oriented data communication using TCP sockets. The UdpClient class is useful for connection-less communication using UDP datagrams. SMTP is the protocol most often used to deliver e-mail. It allows for reliable and asynchronous delivery of SOAP messages. HTTP is the most popular transport on the Web today, including for SOAP use. It is a request–response protocol that, when combined with SOAP, maps well to remote method calls. The WebRequest and WebResponse classes are very useful for HTTP work, as is the WebClient class.
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