What is the primary purpose of SOAP?

The primary purpose of SOAP, which stands for Simple Object Access Protocol, is to exchange structured and typed information over the web. This protocol allows different systems to communicate with one another, enabling them to send and receive messages that are formatted in XML. SOAP is designed to be platform-independent and language-agnostic, which means that applications written in different programming languages or running on different operating systems can interact seamlessly with each other via SOAP messages.

The structured nature of SOAP messages, encapsulated in XML, allows for rich data types and complex data structures to be sent as part of the communication, making it particularly suitable for web services that need to share detailed information across various systems. Additionally, SOAP provides extensibility, which means features like security and transactions can be integrated effectively.

This focus on exchanging information is what sets it apart from other options that mention a graphical interface, database management, or web application security, which are not the core functionalities that SOAP is designed to address.