Tasks
Web services performance
Unfortunately, performance of Web services is still poor compared to other distributed computing technologies. The main problem is the trade-off between performance and interoperability. Specifically, this means the use of XML encoding (marshalling and demarshalling) for SOAP/HTTP-bound Web services.For HTTP and HTTPS-bound Web services, there is the concept of Web service dynamic caching. This requires only a configuration change to enable a significant performance improvement. No app changes are required to implement caching on either the client or server side.
When planning to apply dynamic caching, one of the main tasks is to define which service operations are cacheable. Not all of them should be (for example, dynamic or sensitive data). This can be a complex task depending on the size of the app and the number of operations exposed. Over a slow network, client-side caching can be especially beneficial.
For SOAP, some performance improvements can be achieved with the MTOM standard through the optimization of the messages it provides. Avoiding the use of large messages can also help.
Finally, the StAX standard constitutes an alternative and more efficient method to change and traverse XML data and should be considered.