RPC vs Document/Literal

[Arjun Reddy]

Hi All,

I googled and understood some concepts regarding the above approach. Can anyone tell me if I am right or wrong?

1). RPC approach

-->Input and Output to the web service(In the soap request/response) is a method name and parameters.
-->Cannot validate the request to the web service

2).Document/Literal approach:

-->Input and Output to the web service are XML messages.
-->Can validate the SOAP Request with an XML Schema.

Thanks.

[Arjun Reddy]

I just want to make sure before I get into the testing stuff coz am a complete novice to this.

[Dan Drillich]

Arjun,

The cheerful page Soap Fight: RPC vs. Document supports your summary.

Regards,
Dan

[Arjun Reddy]

Thanks Dan for the link. I am just trying to find out if what I understood is correct. is it?/

Thanks.

[Peer Reynders]

Originally posted by Arjun Reddy:
I am just trying to find out if what I understood is correct. is it?

You aren't quite there yet. Here are some nits

You can't compare RPC and Document/literal. You can compare messaging styles (RPC vs Document), encoding styles (encoding vs literal), or messaging modes (e.g. RPC/literal vs Document/literal)

"Cannot validate the request to the web service" - should most likely be Cannot validate message payloads with XML Schema. Document/literal payloads can be validated entirely through XML schema, RPC/literal payloads have to take the WSDL's message composition rules into account (so the validator would have to be WSDL aware), and the encoding of RPC/encoding is outside of the scope of XML Schema and WSDL.

You are not considering the the "Wrapped Document/literal" convention which describes an informal RPC-oriented payload document format that is fully validatable through XML. It's just not being that honest about being "RPC".

I've always found these useful:
Which style of WSDL should I use?
wrapped document/literal convention