SOAP 1.2 JAX-RPC and JAX-WS support SOAP 1.1. JAX-WS also supports SOAP 1.2. XML/HTTP The WSDL 1.1 specification defined an HTTP binding, which is a means by which you can send XML messages over HTTP without SOAP. JAX-RPC ignored the HTTP binding. JAX-WS adds support for it. WS-I's Basic Profiles JAX-RPC supports WS-I's Basic Profile (BP) version 1.0. JAX-WS supports BP 1.1. (WS-I is the web services interoperability organization.) New Java features JAX-RPC maps to Java 1.4. JAX-WS maps to Java 5.0. JAX-WS relies on many of the features new in Java 5.0. Java EE 5, the successor to J2EE 1.4, adds support for JAX-WS, but it also retains support for JAX-RPC, which could be confusing to today's web services novices. The data mapping model JAX-RPC has its own data mapping model, which covers about 90 percent of all schema types. Those that it does not cover are mapped to javax.xml.soap.SOAPElement . JAX-WS's data mapping model is JAXB....