17.1.1.Virtuoso SOAP Support Overview

Virtuoso provides a framework for both consuming SOAP services (acting as a client) and producing them (acting as a server). The Virtuoso web server has a mechanism for handling SOAP messages and passing them to stored procedures for processing. Both SOAP 1.0 and SOAP 1.1 messages and data types are supported. You may use all base SQL data types, as well as heterogeneous arrays, as both arguments and return values of Virtuoso SOAP services. A full-featured set of functions for handling SOAP objects is provided. Services using a transport mechanism other than HTTP can also be constructed using the API. The SOAP framework may be used independently of any of the other web-related services.

Virtuoso/PL can also issue requests to SOAP servers. SOAP can be used to access any application servers, including those running within the Virtuoso server.

The Virtuoso SOAP server extends Virtuoso/PL parameter handling by adding complex data types declared with XML schema as parameter values for stored procedures. The Virtuoso SOAP server provides automatic validation of the parameters in requests, based on schema declarations.