What do you mean by SOAP encoding?

SOAP uses an XML format to encode data. There are two ways in which it maps high level datatypes like integers, arrays to a serialized XML format- Section 5 encoding and Literal encoding. Section 5 encoding, also called SOAP encoding, is named after the section in the SOAP 1.1 specification that defines it. Literal encoding on the other hand uses a XML Schema to validate SOAP data. In addition to these SOAP encoding styles, messages can be of two types- RPC (Remote Procedure Style) or Document style.