Patent ID: 7814211

Claim:
A method of determining a type of encoding to use for a SOAP message, without requiring a text-based encoding, the method comprising: receiving, in a distributed messaging system, a SOAP message bound to a text-based transport encoding for communicating between a first and a second endpoint, the SOAP message being encapsulated in a message object which supports encoding in a plurality of message formats comprising at least one of SMTP and MSMQ, the SOAP message comprising at least a header and a body; selecting a message encoding type for the SOAP message from a plurality of encodings; mapping the message object into raw octets suitable for wire transmission, each raw octet comprising eight binary digits; prioritizing a plurality of transport types for the plurality of encodings, wherein a selection of a transport is based on the priority ranking for each of the plurality of transport settings or by a default setting; encoding the SOAP message with the selected encoding type such that the SOAP message is encoded with the selected encoding type and is no longer bound to the text-based transport encoding, the encoding comprising encoding at least one non-address item included in the body of the SOAP message; and transferring the encoded SOAP message over a communication channel to the second endpoint.