when web services should be used?

I have a web based enterprise application. One problem we are facing is that the backend is tightly coupled with our front end. Now we want to come up with mobile apps plus a desktop client for our software. For this we decided to move our backend to web services so that multiple front end clients can use the same function calls. But still wondering if this is a right move? or any other approach could he开发者_运维知识库lp? Any pitfalls of using webservices? One thing that concerns me most is the speed. Are webservices inherently slower?

Appreciate your help.

Most web services (SOAP, REST) are used to create platform-independent services. What I'm trying to say is that the Web Service can be accessed by applications written in java, .NET platform, etc. without worrying about interoperability between the language use and technology.

Also, most have multiple applications that needs to access the same data, so writing a data abstraction layer for each application is not OO.

In your case, Web Services will be necessary as you will have plenty presentation layers (Desktop, Mobile and Web application) that will access your system through a network protocol. In this case, I would suggest a web service as you can easily write the business logic/rules inside the service and the client will just do a request/response process to get/post data).

It depends on the type of information your passing back and forth but in the broader scheme of things a SOA is the way to go if you looking to have one 'back end' system. I'm sure you'll be happy with the performance and even in some cases surprised. It most cases the database calls are still the bottle necks. I've lead the charge of implementing a SOA on a lot of projects. In a lot of cases the applications have preformed even faster with web services, not because the calls are that much faster but because it will lead you to better design and to take advantage of other technologies like local and remote caching.

I would say there are generally two pitfalls of using web services as the back end.

1.) How they are implemented. Read some books and do some testing before you start writing the real thing. Develop standards and try to stick to them.

2.) Single point of access is a good thing, but not in a unstable or quickly changing environment. Have some redundancy and a backup plan as well as a sandbox and staging area.

Depends on what you do understand with 'webservices'. SOAP, REST, all technologies like this?

SOAP services have the big advantage, that they have a well defined contract through the WSDL as well as the clients can easily generate stubs. On the other hand, SOAP services can also bring a lot more work (e.g. if using them on a client which has no soap client (e.g. iOS, plain html app)). Additionally the webservice stuff brings a lot of overhead, which could play a role if you intend to deliver large data e.g. to mobile devices.

There you must take into consideration that the clients could have limited bandwith (speed and data volume). Furthermore it must process the hole XML document, whereas a json could be more easier for example.

It does not degrade perfomance(speed).Because websevice is soap over http.I think ,In your case The backhand should be exposed as webservice,It would be feasible to invoke the service by multiple client.And more over you can introduce the extra security also if you need....