From the point of view of the business sector, the importance of XML and SOAP concept can't be overlooked since this allows the exchange of information via HTTP. From an ordinary web developer, is it worth the effort learning the intricacies of XML and SOAP?

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All you need is love.

xml for video, music, and rss feeds as well as an xml sitemap to boost pageranking.

it also helps to you in knowing about the podcasting..

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J Suresh Kumar
Google Hacks

Personally, I've always thought that knowledge is its own reward.

Of course, chicks dig skillz, & that helps too.

Yes. It is worth to learn & implement the XML & SOAP in your web sites. The XML & SOAP is a very good method of data exchange processing which helps to manage large amount of data from server to client.

I think nowadays, the big organizations are coming to implement the XML & SOAP technology to their web development.

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Karpagarajan. R
Necessity is the mother of invention

SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol
SOAP is a communication protocol
SOAP is for communication between applications
SOAP is a format for sending messages
SOAP is designed to communicate via Internet
SOAP is platform independent
SOAP is language independent
SOAP is based on XML
SOAP is simple and extensible
SOAP allows you to get around firewalls
SOAP will be developed as a W3C standard

This might give clear for your question.
SOAP Introduction