Originally posted by Romario Dominic:
In regular WebService applications,SOAP is commonly used as the messaging protocol right? Now is there any other protocol which is as useful?
SOAP tries to fulfill many requirements which makes it a fairly heavy-weight technology. SOAP and WSDL have been and continue to be standardized, so it's relatively simple to build tools that utilize them. Often SOAP/WSDL ends up being an overkill solution to some of the problems that its being applied to - simply because the tools at hand made it "relatively simple" to set up.
For RPC you can always consider these technologies:
Hessian (Binary over HTTP)Burlap (XML over HTTP)Spring HTTP invoker(tunneled) RMIXML-RPCConsiderations when choosing a technology Then there is
REST (Representational State Transfer) which isn't a protocol or technology - it's an architectural style.
REST-style web services are IMHO much better suited to supporting AJAX-clients (for example) than heavy-weight SOAP Web Services. However there is no "standard" - it's a style, so tool vendors can't directly support (or exploit) it, consequently it never got as much press as SOAP.
Building Web Services the REST Way Implementing REST Web Services: Best Practices and Guidelines REST vs. SOAP at Amazon The RESTful Web Column Playing Together Nicely: Getting REST and SOAP to Share Each Other's Toys Using REST with Ajax Axis 2.0: RESTful Web services Support [ March 01, 2006: Message edited by: Peer Reynders ]