The latter would add subscription and streaming, and more efficient transports. But yeah they are basically the same idea.
I hate that for years the concept of RPC was equated to XML which in turn equated to some implementation of the (XML based) tool and then a whole lot of distracting discourse around XML vs JSON, we kinda do still have that these days with yaml vs whatever.
It's like those things, but I've never seen protobuf or gRPC used for APIs this extensive.
The tooling around these paths is also lackluster by comparison if you're using something like Visual Studio.
I'd rather fight XML namespaces and HTTP/1.1 transports than sort through the wreckage of what "best practices" has recently brought to bear - especially in terms of unattended complexity in large, legacy enterprises. Explaining to a small bank in Ohio that they're going to need to adjust all of their firewalls to accommodate some new protocols is a total nonstarter in my business.
This sounds like protobuf and gRPC. Is that a close analogy?