Relationship between SOAP and RPC

Question

I'm improving my sight of the web services environment. Currently, I can't understand the relationship or the difference between RPC and SOAP.

I know that we can send binary, json with RPC and SOAP is XML only. Is that the only difference?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

RPC is a catch-all term for any method of calling some functionality on a remote server that emulates calling a local function. A client library, SDK, or RPC framework like gRPC can all be thought of as variations on the same theme. Colloquially,RPC is also used to describe webservices that are defined in terms of functions you call rather than entities you manipulate.

SOAP is a very specific XML-based message protocol that can be used for RPC. Today, SOAP is mostly dead tech. The protocol was considered unnecessarily complex, difficult to properly cache and was extremely space inefficient over the wire.