Our uni lecturer teaches us stuff like SOAP/WSDL and BPEL. However, judging by the exercises we get (and by the very limited working experience I have), I feel like that kind of stuff is not really used anymore nowadays, at least not in new systems?
Is that feeling true? Or is SOAP/WSDL and BPEL still widely spread?
On
Bogdan's answer to this question is on point. I am replying just to give you a different perspective. I have been working as a developer with Oracle BPEL (SOA Suite 11g and 12c) for about 6 years at different places. Consuming XML and JSON requests through WSDL and WADL. Doing all kinds of transformations and logic in BPEL and OSB. None of this is new or fancy, but it is still heavily used in big companies that don't move particularly swiftly. For example goverment agencies, large scale retailers, banks and whatnot. I believe it will continue to be used for about 10 more years in the same way, but this is wild speculation. However, the concepts learned apply to newer stuff as well. Newer API management tools use SOAP and RESTS 2, so learning this will not only give you a job right now, it also provides you with a start for later.
Yes and no. Depends on your meaning of "widely spread".
For example, is COBOL widely spread?
There are still a lot of financial and administrative applications that are running COBOL on top of mainframes with hardware that's barely produced anymore. So yes. Will COBOL and mainframes be your tools of choice when building applications today? No way. You go, for example, with a microservice architecture deployed on cloud, with REST APIs and message brokers, and SPA frontends written in React or whatever the JavaScript framework du jour is, etc., etc.
As long as there is a need, the technologies will be used. Especially if they are mature and have proven their worth in the field. I won't go into the useless fight of REST vs SOAP for example, but SOAP is used in enterprises a lot and comes together with other specifications to enhance it. If SOAP is already there for historical reasons, and everyone is already using it, it makes little financial sense to replace it with something new. You only replace things if, for example, software you use no longer gets security updates, or licenses are no longer available, or in the case of COBOL, maybe because no more hardware gets produced so you need to switch to something else.
So like I said, it depends on your meaning of "widely spread". What you are probably seeing is a combination of school curriculums not keeping up with advances in technology or trends in job markets, no rush to change the curriculums because for the most part it's concepts that are mainly taught and SOAP/WSDL/BPEL are just ways of puting those concepts in practice, or a teacher that has not updated their skills in decades and they teach what they know.
Your exams will cover them, so anyways you need to learn them. But it's good you are also aware of the limitations of the things you are being taught and can start preparing for what you will find after you finish school.