Date: Jun. 8, 2001
Link: http://windows.oreilly.com/news/soapreview_0600.html
Source Author or Organization: James Snell, O'Reilly Windows Resource Center

In this article, James Snell, co-author (with Ken Macleod) of Programming Web Applications with SOAP, compares two important SOAP development tools: the MS SOAP SDK (Microsoft SOAP Toolkit For Visual Studio 6.0) (Build 204) and IBM SOAP4J (Apache SOAP implementation) (Version 2.2).

The following criteria was used to compare both implementations: ease of use, stability, SOAP Version 1.1 conformance and general compatibility. Overall, Apache SOAP wins the stability, conformance and compatibility categories, with the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit For Visual Studio 6.0 coming out ahead in the "ease of use" category. Snell predicts considerable improvement in both products as time progresses, since both companies have committed significant resources to their respective SOAP development efforts.

The Apache SOAP implementation, based on IBM's SOAP4J, was recently relocated to the Apache Software Foundation.