What's the best way to communicate data between java services and .net clients?

We have what I think is a fairly typical client/server architecture, with a frontend written in .NET, displaying data sent from a backend written in Java.

Currently, we use a custom message-based framework for transmitting data snapshots and updates down to clie开发者_StackOverflownts. This might be upgraded; although the basic java service/.net client setup is set in stone, we want to look at replacements for the message framework, for example WPF MVVM (with an eye on Sliverlight), with databindings to java web-services, or perhaps Coherence.

I was wondering what experiences others have had with this and other approaches (obviously there's no golden bullet for all situations...).

Our requirements are that the clients can show large, frequently updating and editable datasets, primarily in grids.

Update I've accepted that REST/SOAP is the standard way to do it, but I'd still be interested to hear any other approaches, especially from a performance point of view.

Web services is the most common choice:

• RESTful service - more flexible, no strictly defined schema
• SOAP service - rigid schema, less flexible

Checkout protobuf, which is a good platform agnostic protocol.