Quoted Verbatim from Anne's Email @ http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=axis-user&m=104275383530230&w=2:
I hate to break it to you, but Microsoft .NET and Microsoft SOAP Toolkit are the two most common systems used to access SOAP.
I agree that Axis is the most commonly used SOAP implementation for Java. I don't think Apache SOAP fits in that category anymore, though. Use of Apache SOAP has definitely dropped off since Axis was released. Other very popular Java SOAP implementations include IBM WSTK (based on Axis), Systinet WASP, The Mind Electric GLUE, and IONA XMLBus. I suspect that BEA, Borland (based on Axis), Oracle, and Macromedia (based on Axis) have a pretty significant share also.
Here's a quick comparison between Apache SOAP and Axis:
Apache SOAP Axis ---- ---- really old third generation really slow much faster, but not as fast as many no WSDL support WSDL support proprietary API JAX-RPC API RPC/encoded only RPC/encoded and Doc/literal interoperability issues very interoperable extensiblity issues very extensible low level API for headers easy handler support for headers
In other words, don't even consider using Apache SOAP.