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POWhat is the benefit of XML-RPC over plain XML?
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  1. POWhat is the benefit of XML-RPC over plain XML?
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    copied!<p>My company has been using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC" rel="noreferrer">XML-RPC</a> for a while, but lately I'm wondering what the benefit is of XML-RPC compared to plain XML. Firstly, it's horrible "obese", consider:</p> <pre><code>&lt;struct&gt; &lt;member&gt; &lt;name&gt;ROOM_ID&lt;/name&gt; &lt;value&gt; &lt;int&gt;1&lt;/int&gt; &lt;/value&gt; &lt;/member&gt; &lt;member&gt; &lt;name&gt;CODE&lt;/name&gt; &lt;value&gt; &lt;string&gt;MR-101&lt;/string&gt; &lt;/value&gt; &lt;/member&gt; &lt;member&gt; &lt;name&gt;NAME&lt;/name&gt; &lt;value&gt; &lt;string&gt;Math Room&lt;/string&gt; &lt;/value&gt; &lt;/member&gt; &lt;member&gt; &lt;name&gt;CAPACITY&lt;/name&gt; &lt;value&gt; &lt;int&gt;30&lt;/int&gt; &lt;/value&gt; &lt;/member&gt; &lt;/struct&gt; </code></pre> <p>Compared to this:</p> <pre><code>&lt;room&gt;&lt;ROOM_ID&gt;1&lt;/ROOM_ID&gt;&lt;CODE&gt;MR-101&lt;/CODE&gt; &lt;NAME&gt;Math Room&lt;/NAME&gt;&lt;CAPACITY&gt;30&lt;/CAPACITY&gt;&lt;/room&gt; </code></pre> <p>Or even this:</p> <pre><code>&lt;room ROOM_ID=1 CODE=MR-101 NAME=”Math Room” CAPACITY=30 /&gt; </code></pre> <p>Secondly, XML-RPC seems fairly widespread but not quite ubiquitous and I'm not that impressed with the support for it in C++ and PHP. I've had problems with all the libraries that I tried in both languages.</p> <p>Thirdly, it seems to me that I could make remote procedure calls with plain XML as easily as with XML-RPC. {(9/9/2009): Every language has libraries for serialising language-level objects into XML. Both XML and XML-RPC require application-level schemas to be defined, for example, how the fields should be spelt, but neither needs any additional schema to be defined. Many people make RPC calls with plain XML.}</p> <p>So what is the value-add of XML-RPC?</p>
 

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