I was recently approached by my management with an interesting problem - where I am pretty sure I am telling my bosses the correct information but I really want to make sure I am telling them the correct stuff.

I am being asked to develop some software that has this function:

• An application at one location is constantly processing real-time data every second and only generates data if the underlying data has changed in any way.
• On the event that the data has changed send the results to another box over a network
• Maintains a persistent connection between the both machines, altering the remote box if for some reason the network connection went down

From what I understand, I imagine that I need to do some reading on doing some sort of TCP/IP socket-level stuff. That way if the connection is dropped the remote location will be aware that the data it has received may be stale.

However management seems to be very convinced that this can be accomplished using SOAP. I was under the impression that SOAP is more or less a way for a client to initiate a procedure from a server and get some results via the HTTP protocol. Am I wrong in assuming this? I haven't been able to find much information on how SOAP might be able to solve a problem like this.

I feel like a lot of people around my office are using SOAP as a buzzword and that has generated a bit of confusion over what SOAP actually is - and is capable of.

Any thoughts on how to accomplish this task would be appreciated!