Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a protocol for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is XML-based and consists of three parts:
An envelope that defines a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process the message
A set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined data types
A convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses
To illustrate just how easy it is to use OFBiz to create an unlimited number of SOAP-based web service clients, we shall discuss writing an SOAP-based client to request service from a real world web service: the U.S. National Weather Service's National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD). This web service provides a number of useful weather-related products. To keep our example simple, we shall request service from the NWS operation that provides the latitude and longitude for a given (valid) ZIP code. (Note: this web service only supports...