SOAP messages can be formatted using different SOAP message styles and encoding combinations. The style indicates how the SOAP message is structured. The encoding describes how data values are represented. The following table lists the SOAP message formats that OpenEdge supports.

Table 1. SOAP message formats
Format Notes
Document/Literal (Doc/Lit) This is the recommended format for OpenEdge Web services. It works well for ABL and .NET clients.

This includes the wrapped document literal (Wrapped Doc/Lit) convention (developed by Microsoft). Wrapped Doc/Lit is a convention using Doc/Lit that wraps all request parameters for an operation into one input XML complex type and wraps all response parameters into a separate output XML complex type.
RPC/Literal Use this format for clients that do not support Doc/Lit.
RPC/Encoded An earlier standard. The Web Services Interoperability Organization recommends against this format in their Basic Profile Version 1.0.