soap

Mixture of the sodium salts of various fatty acids: palmitic, stearic, and oleic acid. It is made by the action of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) or potassium hydroxide (caustic potash) on fats of animal or vegetable origin. Soap makes grease and dirt disperse in water in a similar manner to a detergent.

Soap was mentioned by Galen in the 2nd century for washing the body, although the Romans seem to have washed with a mixture of sand and oil. Soap was manufactured in Britain from the 14th century, but better-quality soap was imported from Castile or Venice. The Soapmakers' Company, London, was incorporated in 1638. Soap was taxed in England from the time of Cromwell in the 17th century to 1853.

SOAP

Method of bi-directional communication developed by Microsoft, DevlopMentor, and Userland Software. SOAP allows programs running under different operating systems to communicate with each other across firewalls using HTTP and XML as the exchange mechanisms.

SOAP is similar to the Internet Inter-Orb Protocol (IIOP), which is part of Corba, and also to Sun Microsystems' Remote Method Invocation (RMI), which allows communication between programs written in Java.