The Web Services model is rapidly growing as an option for deploying
reusable, component-based functionality over the Internet. Exposing these
services is the Simple Object Access Protocol, which defines a lightweight
mechanism for invoking these services or transactions.
The SOAP specification defines a set of rules for using XML to represent such
Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs). These RPCs can ride on various transport
protocols, such as HTTP, SMTP, and POP3. However, the current SOAP
specification (version 1.1) doesn't define all the features developers might
expect to find in a traditional distributed object protocol, such as
security. This article introduces you to the pluggable provider for Apache
SOAP, and how a provider can be implemented to enable user-level secur... (more)