No.
Installing from source, compiling it and installing it - and then keep track of what has gone where - that was was I was talking about - because that was your question...was it not?
rpm is short for "Redhat Package Manager" and is a way to install previously compiled software to your system.
Redhat "invented" this format and it is the easiest way to install software to a redhat system (or a compatible one like fedora and many others), while keeping track of what is installed to which location.
More questions?
Read this first (second and third hit in google - search term: rpm):
http://www.rpm.org/
http://www.rpm.org/RPM-HOWTO/