SOAP RPC vs Messaging

[JeanLouis Marechaux]

Hi all,
I've read in a Microsoft article that SOAP encoding will disappear in a futur spec, and that
RPC / literal is a non-sense.
So that the real future of SOAp is Document/Literal, which is the default .Net/ASP behavior.
Propaganda or real technical advise ??
What do you think about it ?

[JeanLouis Marechaux]

Nobody wants to answer this one ??
[ April 07, 2003: Message edited by: Jean-Louis Marechaux ]

[Kyle Brown]

I agree. The WS-I (the Web Services Interoperability standards organization) has said as much.
Kyle

[JeanLouis Marechaux]

Well,
I can't understand why there so much noise around RPC (with Sun and the Jax-RPC) if the futur is to be Document centric

[Lasse Koskela]

I can't understand why there so much noise around RPC if the future is to be Document centric.

Think about where RPC is used right now. You have all sorts of CORBA applications etc. making essentially RPCs to implement some functionality. We can argue back and forth whether CORBA is standard enough (the implementations that is) but XML-RPC by definition ("XML" in "XML-RPC") has built-in compatibility regarding encoding, has no problems with little/big endians, etc. So here you have some degree of reasoning for RPC.
Personally, I think the hype about XML-RPC (or the SOAP equivalent) is just that. Hype. I am much more excited about standardized asynchronous (document-based) messaging, which IMO helps solve "bigger" problems in the enterprise such as workflows, rapid integration, etc.

[JeanLouis Marechaux]

That's exactly my point Lasse.
If Document-based approached is better than RPC to fit enterprise's needs, and if WS-I position is to promote Document/Litteral, so why so much effort around the RPC stuff.
When you read the Apache SOAP doc, it sounds like RPC is the only solution. Only a few lines are dedicated to the Document-centric one.

On the other hand, as a newbee in Soap, RPC is attractive because it allows to have a SOAP normalized response to each call, with SOAP errors handling if needed.
I understand that SOAP RPC calls with fine-grained methods is a non-sense for a lot of projects.
But the RPC/Litteral is maybe a good solution.
To summarize, my point is : Why the WS-I has chosen the document-centric approach. Is it realy the best one ?
And if yes, why so many works around the RPC ? Is it just hype ?

[Steve Watson]

And most web services implementations either ignore or treat as an after thought asynchronous document type web services and focus entirely on rpc. Eg. WebLogic, Apache Axis, Glue. The only straight forward implementations I have found are Sun's Java Web Services Developer Pack (though just a reference implementation) and WASP - maybe there are others, I would be interested in hearing about them.

[Byron Estes]

The buzz is always behind the technology as are the standards. The talk focuses on what is and RPC is simple. The concepts are familiar even though the implementation is different. We've all been doing stuff like this in our careers. Years ago we were using message queues with proprietary message formats to connect applications together. The plumbing is not new, the standardization and the tools to make these technologies and infrastructures available to the masses is what witll be new and exciting.

[JeanLouis Marechaux]

Actually, it appears there is a little confusion with webservices vocabulary. And that's why I am confused myself.
First, there is the programming model (RPC vs Document).
And then the message format (RPC vs Document).
According to my latest reads (and that's not what I understood first), the .Net model is
- RPC programming + Document Format.

My knowledge of Apache SOAP and Axis is not important enough to be fully certain I'm right, but my understanding is that to be close to the .Net Model above, you have to do RPC using Litteral.
But in each case, the programming model to use is RPC.
The point is RPC is not rejected by Microsoft as I thought at first glance.
And WS-I Basic profile is not the ultimate specification everybody agrees with.
So my understanding is that I can keep doing RPC WebServices. This is not gonna disappear.

Some articles from..... Microsoft

Msdn
GototNet