Which of the following is a framework commonly used to access a web service?

The correct answer is SOAP. SOAP, which stands for Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol for exchanging structured information in the implementation of web services. It defines a standard communication protocol that allows programs running on different operating systems to communicate with each other. SOAP uses XML to encode its messages and typically relies on HTTP or SMTP for message transmission.

While Java is a programming language, ASP.NET is a web application framework designed for building web applications and services, and HTML is a markup language used for creating web pages and web applications, none of these directly serve as a protocol specifically for accessing web services in the same structured manner as SOAP does. Therefore, SOAP stands out as the most appropriate choice for accessing web services among the provided options.