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RPC style and document style are catchphrases frequently heard in the context of web services and the SOAP protocol. What exactly do they mean? How do they relate to the pair of terms "encoded/literal"? Where does the confusion about these terms come from? This article describes the WSDL binding style and use attributes.

A Web service is described by a WSDL document. A WSDL binding describes how the service is bound to a messaging protocol, particularly the SOAP messaging protocol. A WSDL SOAP binding can be either an RPC style binding or a document style binding. A SOAP binding can also have an encoded use or a literal use. This gives us four style/use models