It's going to take a miracle and a lot of compromise for SOAP to coalesce into a single protocol that interops. We've never really gotten a clear picture of how Microsoft is using it, and they have not gotten a clear picture of how we're using it. Now that's not because our respective pieces of software aren't available for free download, because they are, but everyone is so busy, there's been very little looking. They don't use “RPC” style communication, but it's the only kind of communication we know. (I don't understand what else there is, the disconnect is so big.) Adding to the confusion, Microsoft and IBM, apparently thinking it was solely up to them to decide what SOAP is, added a huge complex layer called WSDL, in private, without consulting anyone I know, and both are insisting it is somehow related to the base layer for interop. To be fair, some independent developers agree with them. I have no interest in spending months writing code to support something whose benefits are so vague. With limited resources, an argument they make when I ask why not support XML-RPC, I can't divert our resources from features and fixes for our users. Anyway, there is no single thing called SOAP, when you look at reality there are lots of things people call SOAP, and they don't work together. Now maybe that will change, I hope so, but that's where we are right now. [Scripting News]