The Web services platform can, for example, interact with the management tools to determine the time taken to process any incoming or outgoing SOAP message. In fact, the Web services platform plays an important role in delivering most of the management information about the Web services it supports to the management tools. It can relieve the Web services themselves of most of this duty. The exception to this is the case where unexpected events occur in the Web service; it must have some way of notifying the platform directly about such conditions.