Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a lightweight protocol for exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is an XML based protocol that consists of three parts:

• The SOAP envelope construct defines an overall framework for expressing what is in a message; who should deal with it, and whether it is optional or mandatory.

• The SOAP encoding rules defines a serialization mechanism that can be used to exchange instances of application-defined datatypes.

• The SOAP RPC representation defines a convention that can be used to represent remote procedure calls and responses.

The industry standards which specify SOAP can be found at the following URL:

• www.w3.org/TR/soap/

The following Cisco Unified Presence web services are made available via SOAP:

• Client Configuration Web Service

• Presence Web Service

• Platform SOAP Service