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F E A T U R E

Be Nimble, But Be Safe

April 3, 2003
By Lori MacVittie

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Fatter Payloads, Bigger Bulge

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	In this article
	Introduction
	Too Good To Be True?
	Standards Watch
	Executive Summary
	How'd We Get Here? Evolution, Baby!
	Fatter Payloads, Bigger Bulge
	Epoll Results

SOAP requests (and responses) comprise much bigger payloads, primarily because they are XML. They contain not only the data, but a plethora of additional information, all necessary for the Web service receiving the request to process that request.

code example

click to enlarge

As you can see, even in this simple scenario, the payload for a SOAP request is much fatter than more conventional means of data submission. It isn't just the addition of the SOAP headers; it's the wrapper around each piece of data being submitted that makes the payload larger. For each parameter included in the submission, the payload grows. The size gets even larger if you specify the type of each parameter (for example, 2). At a minimum, you'll need to double the number of bytes being sent to account for the parameter wrapping. If an HTML form submission is 1 KB, you'll have at least 2 KB with SOAP, because every parameter name shows up twice--wrapping the actual data being submitted.

Network administrators need to be aware that live requests and responses will likely be much larger and consume more resources.