What is the difference between the SoapFormatter and the XmlSerializer?
SoapFormatter is used to create a Soap envelop and use an object graph to generate the result. The XmlSerializer process use only the public data and the result is a more common xml file. The Web Service in .Net use an XmlSerializer to generate the output contained in the Soap message. The SoapFormatter and the BinaryFormatter are used in the .Net Remoting serialization process.