[ralphc]

This is from 10+ years ago, but my biggest gripe with SOAP was that if you didn't have the exact same library on both ends then you have problems. Apache Axis vs CSF vs soap-ws, and that's just Java. Java to .NET was almost impossible to pass around.

[occz]

That would indeed be a huge downside - the point of a specifiation would be to have interoperability be entirely seamless. If SOAP failed on that account, then it deserves its fate.