XML/Soap

[WhiteD3]

Am writing an Excel VBA application that sources data over the net from a SQL DB and writes same back to my spreadsheet. While I've got the XML/Soap bit working fine (really just copied the code from the vendor's site), I don't really understand what XML and SOAP is.

XML is the way the data is stored in the SQL DB?
SOAP is the transfer protocol?

Can anyone give me an explanation?

Cheers.

[jik22]

These days they're part of what gets termed "Web Services".

XML, as it's name suggests, is a markup language. However, unlike the more usual HTML, it is customisable (Hence the eXtensible bit) for your needs. Mainly used for data transfer and document formatting.

SOAP was originally designed as an access protocol, but is now mainly used for sending XML messages between systems.

As an idea of application, we use SOAP/XML as part of the published Web Services interface on our communications systems to allow other systems to talk to them.

[WhiteD3]

Thanks Jeff.:)

[Delta_Farce]

I found some more information re XML for you in Wiki. It looks like a pretty comprehensive explanation:

XML - Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML)

Cheers,

Mark

[WhiteD3]

Ok,

All works fine but the volume of data is too big. Where would I find a list of xml methods and properties (vba speak) so I can revamp my code?

Cheers.

[jik22]

Ok,

All works fine but the volume of data is too big. Where would I find a list of xml methods and properties (vba speak) so I can revamp my code?

Cheers.

I don't code myself, but I'd have thought a read of the spec (http://http://www.w3.org/XML/) would be a good place to start. If it's VBA specific though, you'll probably have more luck on MSDN (http://http://msdn.microsoft.com).