Werner, If you're just starting out with SOAP, I suggest you start with a SOAP implementation that supports WSDL -- for example Apache Axis. See http://xml.apache.org/axis. It's the follow-on project to Apache SOAP.
More and more, SOAP-RPC is becoming out of favor. WS-I has decided that SOAP Encoding is a key source of interoperability issues, and SOAP Encoding is disallowed by the WS-I Basic Profile. Since most SOAP implementations always use SOAP Encoding with the RPC style, SOAP-RPC has become a "bad" thing. >From the SOAP message point of view, there's really very little difference between SOAP RPC style and SOAP document style. The key difference is SOAP encoding versus literal encoding. From a message perspective, the only difference is whether or not you use a methodname container for your payload. For example, you can pass a purchase order as a document or as a parameter in a method called placeOrder. It's your choice: Document style: <env:Body> <m:purchaseOrder xmlns:m="someURI"> ... </m:purchaseOrder> </env:Body> RPC style: <env:Body> <m:placeOrder xmlns:m="someURI"> <m:purchaseOrder> ... </m:purchaseOrder> </m:placeOrder> </env:Body> Per the specification, both types of messages can be encoded using a XML Schema or using the SOAP Encoding data model. In practice, many SOAP implementations only support RPC style with SOAP Encoding and Document style with literal encoding. A WSDL description provides the same information about the format of the message whether you're using RPC or document style. So a WSDL compiler can just as easily generate a client stub for document style as it can for RPC style. The Microsoft implementations (.NET and MS SOAP Toolkit) generate document style by default. Many of the Java-based SOAP implementations are switching over to document style by default, also. Anne > -----Original Message----- > From: Werner Jorling [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 5:36 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: General Question RPC vs. Messaging > > > (Sorry, first posted as a reply) > > Hello, > > studying the SOAP-Messaging samples from the the book 'Java and > SOAP' (Robert > Englander, O'Reilly) and from apache-soap I'm confused about the > difference > between SOAP-RPC and SOAP-Messaging. > > There are SOAP-Messaging samples, where services are implemented with the > signiture > > public void serviceMethod( > Envelope env, > SOAPContext reqCtx, > SOAPContext resCtx > ) > > Services of this kind are usually sent to client messages > containing Envlopes > to an URL like http//host:pppp/soap/servlet/messagerouter. > > On the other side there are SOAP-Messaging-service samples not > distinguishable > from SOAP-RPC-style services . Only the service-tag in the > deployment-descriptor contains the type="message"-attribute. > > Moreover this services are invoked by a Call in a SOAP-RPC like > manner, with a > URL like http://host:pppp/soap/servlet/rpcrouter. > > Consequently I do not really understand the difference between > SOAP-RPC and > SOAP-Messaging. > > Regards > > Werner > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>