best practices on the creation of webmethods

[Bert Vandenberghe]

Hi,

I was wondering if there are any best practices on the creation of
webmethods? I'll try to explain this a little more:
My problem is that we are changing an existing (large) DCOM application to
use web services, but we have like hundreds of different methods you can
call and what I wanted to do, is add a couple of generic webmethods that
take a serializable .NET class or structure, and in that class or structure
we put all the necessary information about the action that must be
performed. I would think this is a lot easier instead of adding all the
different methods, but my question is, if that is recommended to implement
this in such a way? If not, is it then recommended to add one service with
all these method, or is it better to split it up in different services? Is
there a recommended maximum of webmethods for one service?

I have to add that the web service will only be used internally, I mean that
normally no other company will use our web service (we create the client
application).

Any thought or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Bert

[Drew Marsh]

Bert Vandenberghe wrote:

we have like hundreds of different methods you
can
call and what I wanted to do, is add a couple of generic webmethods
that
take a serializable .NET class or structure, and in that class or
structure
we put all the necessary information about the action that must be
performed.
How would you handle each logical operation if not as a separate method?
I mean, you could go with some kind of command pattern and build some custom
routing, but why not leverage the frameworks that already exist for routing
the messages to the right methods and keep it broken up that way (ASMX or
WSE)?
I would think this is a lot easier instead of adding all
the
different methods, but my question is, if that is recommended to
implement
this in such a way?
I don't think it's easier at all. If anything you're going to make it harder
for people to consume because your generic approach, while perhaps infinitely
extensible, has to lack type specific details that make it harder for a caller
to understand what information is necessary for any given operation. For
example from a pure XML perspective your method would really just need to
take xsd:any and then people would have to go figure out what message they
want to send you and what parameters make up that method as opposed there
being four parameters directly on the method that they just need to pass.
If not, is it then recommended to add one service
with
all these method, or is it better to split it up in different
services?
You should probably break up the services based on some logical grouping
of operations. For example, if you had user management and order management
aspects, you would have two different services (UserManagement Service OrderManagement Service)
each with N methods for dealing with specific types.
Is
there a recommended maximum of webmethods for one service?
There is none, but like I said you'll probably want to break things up logically.
Think of it like the Win32 API. There's tons of methods in the Win32 right?
But when you want to do draw something to the screen you know where to go:
GDI. Now, there's still a ton of methods in GDI, but you know they're all
related in some way to drawing.
I have to add that the web service will only be used internally, I
mean that normally no other company will use our web service (we
create the client application).

Internal or external I still think it's in your best interests to design
it the way I've discussed above. Designing web services APIs is really are
no different than any other type of API design when it boils down to it.
You still want to avoid creating a monolithic frankenstein.

HTH,
Dre

[Mujtaba Syed]

Hi Bert:

If your distributed application is going to be used internally, you will be
better off by using .NET Remoting. Incase you do want web services try and
make your API chunky rather than chatty (that is, few web methods that each
do quite a bit is better than having lots of web methods that do one very
granular piece of functionality). Also, if you are using web services (and
not .NET Remoting) for the reason that you may change your client
environment someday, you should make your service compliant to WS-I Basic
Profile 1.0.

Thanks,
Mujtaba.

"Bert Vandenberghe" <en*********@ho tmail.com> wrote in message
news:eo******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP09.phx.gbl...

Hi,

I was wondering if there are any best practices on the creation of
webmethods? I'll try to explain this a little more:
My problem is that we are changing an existing (large) DCOM application to
use web services, but we have like hundreds of different methods you can
call and what I wanted to do, is add a couple of generic webmethods that
take a serializable .NET class or structure, and in that class or
structure
we put all the necessary information about the action that must be
performed. I would think this is a lot easier instead of adding all the
different methods, but my question is, if that is recommended to implement
this in such a way? If not, is it then recommended to add one service with
all these method, or is it better to split it up in different services? Is
there a recommended maximum of webmethods for one service?

I have to add that the web service will only be used internally, I mean
that
normally no other company will use our web service (we create the client
application).

Any thought or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Bert

[Bert Vandenberghe]

What I was planning to do, is creating a webmethod with one argument which
is actually a serializable class like this:

[XmlRoot("Generi cMessage")]
public abstract class GenericMessage
{
public enum Action {ADD_THIS, ADD_THAT, EDIT_ANOTHER_TH ING, DELETE_THIS,
ADD};
public Action type;
....
}

Then it is also possible to derive other classes from this one with more
specific information about certain action and use it with the same
webmethod, e.g:

public class AddSpecialMessa ge : GenericMessage
{
public string moreInfo;
....
}

But like you mention, this would not be so clear for an external user what
you can do with this method, but I still think it would be easier than
creating all the seperate methods, just if you want to change something to
one of the method, or add a method...

Maybe it is indeed better to create all the seperate webmethods, thanks for
the advice,

Bert

"Drew Marsh" <dr****@hotmail .no.spamming.co m> wrote in message
news:10******** **************@ msnews.microsof t.com...

Bert Vandenberghe wrote:

we have like hundreds of different methods you
can
call and what I wanted to do, is add a couple of generic webmethods
that
take a serializable .NET class or structure, and in that class or
structure
we put all the necessary information about the action that must be
performed.
How would you handle each logical operation if not as a separate method?
I mean, you could go with some kind of command pattern and build some

custom routing, but why not leverage the frameworks that already exist for routing the messages to the right methods and keep it broken up that way (ASMX or
WSE)?

I would think this is a lot easier instead of adding all
the
different methods, but my question is, if that is recommended to
implement
this in such a way?
I don't think it's easier at all. If anything you're going to make it

harder for people to consume because your generic approach, while perhaps infinitely extensible, has to lack type specific details that make it harder for a caller to understand what information is necessary for any given operation. For
example from a pure XML perspective your method would really just need to
take xsd:any and then people would have to go figure out what message they
want to send you and what parameters make up that method as opposed there
being four parameters directly on the method that they just need to pass.

If not, is it then recommended to add one service
with
all these method, or is it better to split it up in different
services?
You should probably break up the services based on some logical grouping
of operations. For example, if you had user management and order

management aspects, you would have two different services (UserManagement Service OrderManagement Service) each with N methods for dealing with specific types.

Is
there a recommended maximum of webmethods for one service?
There is none, but like I said you'll probably want to break things up

logically. Think of it like the Win32 API. There's tons of methods in the Win32 right? But when you want to do draw something to the screen you know where to go:
GDI. Now, there's still a ton of methods in GDI, but you know they're all
related in some way to drawing.

I have to add that the web service will only be used internally, I
mean that normally no other company will use our web service (we
create the client application).

Internal or external I still think it's in your best interests to design
it the way I've discussed above. Designing web services APIs is really are
no different than any other type of API design when it boils down to it.
You still want to avoid creating a monolithic frankenstein.

HTH,
Drew

[Bert Vandenberghe]

Hi Mujtaba,

I hestitated for a long time between .NET Remoting and web services,
but I thought that it is be better to choose web services with the eye on
the
future (Indigo). But it would indeed probably be better for performance to
choose .NET Remoting.
Should I start hesitating again now after reading your message?

Thanks for your advice,
Bert
"Mujtaba Syed" <mu*****@marlab s.com> wrote in message
news:e%******** ********@TK2MSF TNGP14.phx.gbl. ..

Hi Bert:

If your distributed application is going to be used internally, you will be better off by using .NET Remoting. Incase you do want web services try and
make your API chunky rather than chatty (that is, few web methods that each do quite a bit is better than having lots of web methods that do one very
granular piece of functionality). Also, if you are using web services (and
not .NET Remoting) for the reason that you may change your client
environment someday, you should make your service compliant to WS-I Basic
Profile 1.0.

Thanks,
Mujtaba.

"Bert Vandenberghe" <en*********@ho tmail.com> wrote in message
news:eo******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP09.phx.gbl...

Hi,

I was wondering if there are any best practices on the creation of
webmethods? I'll try to explain this a little more:
My problem is that we are changing an existing (large) DCOM application to use web services, but we have like hundreds of different methods you can
call and what I wanted to do, is add a couple of generic webmethods that
take a serializable .NET class or structure, and in that class or
structure
we put all the necessary information about the action that must be
performed. I would think this is a lot easier instead of adding all the
different methods, but my question is, if that is recommended to implement this in such a way? If not, is it then recommended to add one service with all these method, or is it better to split it up in different services? Is there a recommended maximum of webmethods for one service?

I have to add that the web service will only be used internally, I mean
that
normally no other company will use our web service (we create the client
application).

Any thought or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Bert

[Drew Marsh]

Bert Vandenberghe wrote:

I hestitated for a long time between .NET Remoting and web services,
but I thought that it is be better to choose web services with the eye
on
the
future (Indigo). But it would indeed probably be better for
performance to
choose .NET Remoting.
Should I start hesitating again now after reading your message?

You can still get perfectly acceptable performance from Web Services, it's
all about the design. Also, for a quick performance gain in your case, you
can eliminate HTTP from the equation since this is for an in house application
and just use WSE2.0's soap.tcp protocol. The design of your web services
doesn't have to change at all and if you still wanted to expose them over
HTTP in the future you would just start hosting the same classes in ASP.NET
instead.

HTH,
Dre

[Mujtaba Syed]

Hi Bert:

As per the WinHEC drop of Longhorn, Indigo supports two types of services:
Indigo web services (which are next gen web services) and Indigo
RemoteObject services (which are similar in spirit to .NET Remoting).

Your problem is made to be solved by .NET Remoting since you are doing
distributed objects on a homogeneous network.

Thanks.
Mujtaba.

"Bert Vandenberghe" <en*********@ho tmail.com> wrote in message
news:OT******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP09.phx.gbl...

Hi Mujtaba,

I hestitated for a long time between .NET Remoting and web services,
but I thought that it is be better to choose web services with the eye on
the
future (Indigo). But it would indeed probably be better for performance to
choose .NET Remoting.
Should I start hesitating again now after reading your message?

Thanks for your advice,
Bert
"Mujtaba Syed" <mu*****@marlab s.com> wrote in message
news:e%******** ********@TK2MSF TNGP14.phx.gbl. ..

Hi Bert:

If your distributed application is going to be used internally, you will

be

better off by using .NET Remoting. Incase you do want web services try
and
make your API chunky rather than chatty (that is, few web methods that

each

do quite a bit is better than having lots of web methods that do one very
granular piece of functionality). Also, if you are using web services
(and
not .NET Remoting) for the reason that you may change your client
environment someday, you should make your service compliant to WS-I Basic
Profile 1.0.

Thanks,
Mujtaba.

"Bert Vandenberghe" <en*********@ho tmail.com> wrote in message
news:eo******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP09.phx.gbl...

> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if there are any best practices on the creation of
> webmethods? I'll try to explain this a little more:
> My problem is that we are changing an existing (large) DCOM application to > use web services, but we have like hundreds of different methods you
> can
> call and what I wanted to do, is add a couple of generic webmethods
> that
> take a serializable .NET class or structure, and in that class or
> structure
> we put all the necessary information about the action that must be
> performed. I would think this is a lot easier instead of adding all the
> different methods, but my question is, if that is recommended to implement > this in such a way? If not, is it then recommended to add one service with > all these method, or is it better to split it up in different services? Is > there a recommended maximum of webmethods for one service?
>
> I have to add that the web service will only be used internally, I mean
> that
> normally no other company will use our web service (we create the
> client
> application).
>
> Any thought or suggestions are welcome.
>
> Thanks,
> Bert
>
>

[Bert Vandenberghe]

Is using soap over tcp faster than over http? Otherwise it is indeed better
that we install WSE2.0 and that we use tcp instead of http. Thanks for the
tip.

And I think it is indeed more fexible to use web services, just in case a
customer wants to expose it on the internet, you never know...

Thanks,
Bert

"Drew Marsh" <dr****@hotmail .no.spamming.co m> wrote in message
news:10******** **************@ msnews.microsof t.com...

Bert Vandenberghe wrote:

I hestitated for a long time between .NET Remoting and web services,
but I thought that it is be better to choose web services with the eye
on
the
future (Indigo). But it would indeed probably be better for
performance to
choose .NET Remoting.
Should I start hesitating again now after reading your message?
You can still get perfectly acceptable performance from Web Services, it's
all about the design. Also, for a quick performance gain in your case, you
can eliminate HTTP from the equation since this is for an in house

application and just use WSE2.0's soap.tcp protocol. The design of your web services
doesn't have to change at all and if you still wanted to expose them over
HTTP in the future you would just start hosting the same classes in ASP.NET instead.

HTH,
Drew

[Bert Vandenberghe]

Hi Mujtaba,

I was not aware of the 2 different types of services in Indigo, I'll take a
look at that, thanks.
But my choice for web services was based on a video I saw of Richard Turner
(Program manager of Indigo):
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=9990

If you take a look at it, you'll see that he is saying that you may only use
remoting when absolutely necessary, otherwise he advises to use webservices.

Thanks,
Bert

"Mujtaba Syed" <mu*****@marlab s.com> wrote in message
news:e4******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP09.phx.gbl...

Hi Bert:

As per the WinHEC drop of Longhorn, Indigo supports two types of services:
Indigo web services (which are next gen web services) and Indigo
RemoteObject services (which are similar in spirit to .NET Remoting).

Your problem is made to be solved by .NET Remoting since you are doing
distributed objects on a homogeneous network.

Thanks.
Mujtaba.

"Bert Vandenberghe" <en*********@ho tmail.com> wrote in message
news:OT******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP09.phx.gbl...

Hi Mujtaba,

I hestitated for a long time between .NET Remoting and web services,
but I thought that it is be better to choose web services with the eye on the
future (Indigo). But it would indeed probably be better for performance to choose .NET Remoting.
Should I start hesitating again now after reading your message?

Thanks for your advice,
Bert
"Mujtaba Syed" <mu*****@marlab s.com> wrote in message
news:e%******** ********@TK2MSF TNGP14.phx.gbl. ..

Hi Bert:

If your distributed application is going to be used internally, you will

be

better off by using .NET Remoting. Incase you do want web services try
and
make your API chunky rather than chatty (that is, few web methods that

each

do quite a bit is better than having lots of web methods that do one

very granular piece of functionality). Also, if you are using web services
(and
not .NET Remoting) for the reason that you may change your client
environment someday, you should make your service compliant to WS-I Basic Profile 1.0.

Thanks,
Mujtaba.

"Bert Vandenberghe" <en*********@ho tmail.com> wrote in message
news:eo******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP09.phx.gbl...
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if there are any best practices on the creation of
> webmethods? I'll try to explain this a little more:
> My problem is that we are changing an existing (large) DCOM application to

> use web services, but we have like hundreds of different methods you
> can
> call and what I wanted to do, is add a couple of generic webmethods
> that
> take a serializable .NET class or structure, and in that class or
> structure
> we put all the necessary information about the action that must be
> performed. I would think this is a lot easier instead of adding all

the > different methods, but my question is, if that is recommended to

implement

> this in such a way? If not, is it then recommended to add one service

with

> all these method, or is it better to split it up in different services? Is

> there a recommended maximum of webmethods for one service?
>
> I have to add that the web service will only be used internally, I

mean > that
> normally no other company will use our web service (we create the
> client
> application).
>
> Any thought or suggestions are welcome.
>
> Thanks,
> Bert
>
>

[Steve Lutz]

Bert,

One thing I try to design in my webservices is to reduce the need for round
trips to the webservice. So I attempt to rework some of my back-end methods
to reduce this. For example, typically, if I wanted to load information
about a customer, I might have something like:

1) Find Customer ID based on Emailaddress
2) Load customer object

In your webservice, you may think of implementing both of these methods, but
then for the consummer to load a customer in this fashion takes 2 round
trips to the webservice. It would work, but to reduce the round trips, I
would construct one webmethod that would load a customer based on email
address:

public CustomerClass GetCustomerFrom Email(string emailadress);
public CustomerClass GetCustomerFrom ID(string custid);

I realize this is a simplistic version, but hope you get the idea.
I guess maybe that's just good API design to begin with though.

Steve


"Bert Vandenberghe" <en*********@ho tmail.com> wrote in message
news:eo******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP09.phx.gbl...

Hi,

I was wondering if there are any best practices on the creation of
webmethods? I'll try to explain this a little more:
My problem is that we are changing an existing (large) DCOM application to
use web services, but we have like hundreds of different methods you can
call and what I wanted to do, is add a couple of generic webmethods that
take a serializable .NET class or structure, and in that class or structure we put all the necessary information about the action that must be
performed. I would think this is a lot easier instead of adding all the
different methods, but my question is, if that is recommended to implement
this in such a way? If not, is it then recommended to add one service with
all these method, or is it better to split it up in different services? Is
there a recommended maximum of webmethods for one service?

I have to add that the web service will only be used internally, I mean that normally no other company will use our web service (we create the client
application).

Any thought or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Bert