Few questions on SOAP

[joy99]

Dear Group,

I was reading on SOA or Service Oriented Architecture for last few
days and got some questions. As this is a room for the expert computer
scientists, if you can help me solve my queries.

As per I read and felt SOA is an architecture, which relies on few
basic principles as,
the system must be modular, the modules must be distributive, module
interfaces must be clearly defined and documented, module that
implements a service can be swapped out for another module that offers
the same service and interface, service provider modules must be
shareable.
SOA is an architecture which is now a days governed like XML by W3C.
The latest version is SOAP 1.2.
SOA is implemented mainly in a client/server environment, where
applications have the use of service, thus we can say it is a service-
oriented architecture.
It is a step towards cloud computing with its sister WSDL and BPM.

If both client/server are following the SOA then they can communicate
and exchange information without worrying for platform.

SOAP is a software implementation of Python,.NET,J2EE based on this
principle.
SOAPPy is a Python implementation.

My questions are:
(i)	Am I understanding correctly?
(ii)	Does SOAP has any standard architecture like UML other than the
W3C one?
(iii)	Can I write short programs to check the SOAP using my personal
computer as client as well as Server?
(iv)	Is SOAPpy fine?
(v)	What is the difference among SOAP, WSDL and BPM.
(vi)	As SOAP is for communication with a server if I pick a URL and
start to communicate with Google/Yahoo would they allow?
(vii)	Can I design a web based robot/crawler with SOAP?

Wishing you a Happy Day Ahead,
Best Regards,
Subhabrata.