With PROC SOAP, you can include an optional SOAPEnvelope element in your XML file. Do this if you want to include custom information in the SOAPHeader element. A SOAP envelope wraps the message, which has an application-specific message vocabulary. The SOAPHeader content will be added to the actual SAS registered Web service request. This addition occurs because there could be additional SOAPHeader elements including elements that support WS-Addressing or WS-Security that were not included in the XML file that was passed to PROC SOAP. The XML code that is transmitted might not exactly match the XML code provided in this case.

A request does not need to be contained in a SOAP envelope. An envelope will be added if you do not specify an envelope. If an envelope is specified, it will be incorporated into the envelope that is sent. A response is returned within an envelope only if the envelope property is set. The default behavior is to return only the contents of the envelope.

You can set the amount of time to wait for a response from the Web service by using the CONFIGFILE option. The default time to wait is 60 seconds.

Requests must not include an encoding declaration even if the envelope is included. If the request is being read from a file, the file must be encoded in the same encoding as the session encoding. Requests are encoded as UTF-8 before being sent to the Web service.