> From: Krishnamurthy, Ramanathan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 5:43 PM
>
> Is this distinction necessary ? Isn't messaging a special case of RPC.
The terminology itself is confusing. I'm not sure where this usage started,
but
I think it's wrong. And I think you have it backwards (RPC is the special
case).
Here's my take:
SOAP defines a message protocol. Thus everything is a message, and a SOAP
message is defined by the standard as being an XML document comprised of a
SOAP envelope containing an optional header and required body.
What some people call the message model (including, in some sense, the
Apache SOAP
API) is also called document-style SOAP (e.g., the new O'Reilly book on SOAP
by Snell,
et al uses this term), though I think "generic" might also be a reasonable
term. In
any event, all SOAP says is that the body must be an XML element named
"body".
The RPC model adds to this (and thus is a subset) by adding an encoding
scheme (technically it's just one possible encoding scheme, but it seems
certain to be the de
facto standard) and a model that defines parameters, requests, and
responses. Thus, it really is a special case of the more general document
model that happens to use one
particular set of rules for the content of the body of the SOAP message.
Just to confound things, there's nothing stopping you from building an RPC
system using the Apache SOAP "Message" model.
Gary
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