There is substantial interest in using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) in distributed applications? inter-process communications due to its promise of universal interoperability. The utility of SOAP is limited, however, by its inefficient implementation. Our research aims to make SOAP useful for high end or resource-constrained applications. The resulting SOAP-bin communication protocol exhibits substantially improved performance compared to regular SOAP communications. Gains are particularly evident when the same types of parameters are exchanged repeatedly, examples including transactional applications, remote graphics or visualization, and distributed scientific codes. A further improvement to SOAP-bin, termed SOAP-binQ, addresses resource-constrained applications like distributed media codes, where scarce communication bandwidth, for example, may prevent end users from interacting in real-time. SOAP-binQ offers quality management functions that permit SOAP to reduce parameter sizes dynamically, as and when needed. The methods used in size reduction are provided by end users and/or by applications, thereby enabling domain-specific tradeoffs in quality vs. performance. An adaptive use of SOAP-binQ?s quality management techniques presented in this paper significantly reduces the jitter experienced in two sample applications like remote sensing and remote visualization.