Problem with XML-RPC, possibly with SOAP too

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  • Li Ma
    #1

    Problem with XML-RPC, possibly with SOAP too

    Just want to share my experience on XML-RPC.

    We were working on a messaging middleware. We were using XML-RPC as
    communication protocol amoing client apps and server. Client could be
    written by Java, C/C++, VB, Delphi on both Windows or Unix platforms.
    Seams like XML-RPC( similiar to SOAP as you know) was a good choice
    for us. But while the project went on, I encountered some critical
    problems:

    First of all, performance problem. Messages must be going accross
    network in XML format, the encoding/decoding/transmition overhead made
    the communcation slower than normal JMS/MQ/CORBA based systems.

    The second problem was XML-RPC is built upon HTTP which is stateless
    communication protocol and every time a remote call is invoked, a new
    socket connection must be established. That slows down the speed a lot
    too.

    The third problem was since a new connection is needed on each call,
    socket was not released right away( at least on Windows ), therefore
    if messages are sent too frequently(more than a few hundreds per
    second), no more socket connection can be made, and communication just
    failed.

    I never tried it on WebService platform, but as far as I understand,
    web Service is mainly based-on SOAP for communication and SOAP is
    similiar to XML-RPC, I guess it will create the same problem as we
    had. Because of those problems we had to change our communication
    layer to plain socket. With a dedicated socket connection, all the
    problems above were easily gone.

    Anyone had similiar problem as we had? Can you share your experience?

    Li
    Tags: None
    • chris
      #2
      Re: Problem with XML-RPC, possibly with SOAP too

      Li Ma wrote:
      [color=blue]
      > Just want to share my experience on XML-RPC.
      >
      > We were working on a messaging middleware. We were using XML-RPC as
      > communication protocol amoing client apps and server. Client could be
      > written by Java, C/C++, VB, Delphi on both Windows or Unix platforms.
      > Seams like XML-RPC( similiar to SOAP as you know) was a good choice
      > for us. But while the project went on, I encountered some critical
      > problems:
      >
      > First of all, performance problem. Messages must be going accross
      > network in XML format, the encoding/decoding/transmition overhead made
      > the communcation slower than normal JMS/MQ/CORBA based systems.
      >
      > The second problem was XML-RPC is built upon HTTP which is stateless
      > communication protocol and every time a remote call is invoked, a new
      > socket connection must be established. That slows down the speed a lot
      > too.
      >
      > The third problem was since a new connection is needed on each call,
      > socket was not released right away( at least on Windows ), therefore
      > if messages are sent too frequently(more than a few hundreds per
      > second), no more socket connection can be made, and communication just
      > failed.[/color]

      Are you sure about the second and third problems? HTTP 1.1 allows sockets
      to be re-used, and most recent implementations support this. I'm playing
      with an XML-RPC application right now, and I don't see a ServerSocket being
      created and destroyed for every remote call.

      --
      Chris Gray [email protected] net.be

        Comment

        • Li Ma
          #3
          Re: Problem with XML-RPC, possibly with SOAP too

          Yes, pretty positive. You can try write a little program to constantly
          call server. after a few hundred or thousand calls, the call will
          fail.

          Use netstat to check used connections.

          Maybe it is a XML-RPC problem. I'm using Apache XML-RPC for Java 1.1.

          Anyone has tried on SOAP?

          -Li

          chris <[email protected] unet.be> wrote in message news:<bu2voc$ho [email protected] s.nl>...[color=blue]
          > Li Ma wrote:
          >[color=green]
          > > Just want to share my experience on XML-RPC.
          > >
          > > We were working on a messaging middleware. We were using XML-RPC as
          > > communication protocol amoing client apps and server. Client could be
          > > written by Java, C/C++, VB, Delphi on both Windows or Unix platforms.
          > > Seams like XML-RPC( similiar to SOAP as you know) was a good choice
          > > for us. But while the project went on, I encountered some critical
          > > problems:
          > >
          > > First of all, performance problem. Messages must be going accross
          > > network in XML format, the encoding/decoding/transmition overhead made
          > > the communcation slower than normal JMS/MQ/CORBA based systems.
          > >
          > > The second problem was XML-RPC is built upon HTTP which is stateless
          > > communication protocol and every time a remote call is invoked, a new
          > > socket connection must be established. That slows down the speed a lot
          > > too.
          > >
          > > The third problem was since a new connection is needed on each call,
          > > socket was not released right away( at least on Windows ), therefore
          > > if messages are sent too frequently(more than a few hundreds per
          > > second), no more socket connection can be made, and communication just
          > > failed.[/color]
          >
          > Are you sure about the second and third problems? HTTP 1.1 allows sockets
          > to be re-used, and most recent implementations support this. I'm playing
          > with an XML-RPC application right now, and I don't see a ServerSocket being
          > created and destroyed for every remote call.[/color]

            Comment

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