WSDL Binding Style and Encoding

Good article

Binding Styles = RPC or Document.
Binding Use = Encoded or Literal

WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 prefers the use of literal encoding here.

After reading a bit more I think I understand the history behind encoding. The SOAP specification was actually written prior to the adoption of the W3C XSD spec. Since the XSD spec had not yet been adopted, another way of encoding type information had to be used and SOAP encoding was born.

Once XSD was adopted, serialization to various programming language types was possible. JAX-RPC does just that for java. It maps java types to XML Schema Elements.

So, unless I find a VERY good reason to use SOAP encoding, I shant.