The manner in which a SOAP header object encapsulates the XML for a SOAP header is similar to how the ABL Document Object Model (DOM) allows an x-document object to encapsulate the XML of a general XML document. The manner in which a SOAP header-entryref object references a SOAP header entry is similar to how the ABL DOM allows an x-noderef object to reference the individual elements and attributes of a general XML document. Similar dependencies exist for managing the memory for objects in each reference model.

A SOAP header entry (XML sub-tree) must be associated with the SOAP header-entryref object handle. None of the object's methods (see SOAP header-entryref object attributes and methods) can be called successfully unless there is an underlying SOAP header entry.

SOAP header objects can be created in the ABL application in two ways:

  • Implicitly by OpenEdge for the header of an incoming SOAP response message
  • Explicitly by the application using a variation of the CREATE statement

No matter how the application creates these objects, the application is responsible for explicitly deleting these and any other objects that it creates during a session, including the SOAP header-entryref objects used to reference the header entries in a SOAP header object and any X-document and X-noderef objects used to parse and build the XML structures that occupy memory for the underlying XML.