In my mind, SOAP is terrible because of all of the tools that implement the standard but do not interoperate. The fact that a .NET and a Perl SOAP implementatio

In my mind, SOAP is terrible because of all of the tools that implement the standard but do not interoperate. The fact that a .NET and a Perl SOAP implementation can't communicate without a very specific configuration implies that the standard isn't clear enough on the points that actually matter. The other issue I have with SOAP is really an issue with "generic RPC mechanisms" in general. In trying to generically solve every single possible RPC situation with the same tool, they end up creating an opaque tool with a ton of configuration options that expose the entire problem domain back to the user. So if that's necessary, then why bother trying to hide the details of the solution? Just let the developer decide how best to create the RPC abstraction in his or her own application.