Horses for Courses: Services, Objects, and Loose Coupling

Abstract

Object-oriented technologies are used today in the design and development processes for many computer systems; it is a proven paradigm and has made possible the development of very large and complex software systems. . Enabling platforms and tools for building and consuming Web services will not be an exception. However, the way in which a service is implemented using objects, and the way in which it interacts with other services via message exchanges require very different approaches. Today, most tools represent Web Services to application developers as objects. Such an approach carries the danger of underperformance and fragile applications with too tight a level of coupling which thus lose the benefits of service-orientation. This article shows how objects and services should be integrated to build loosely-coupled, performant, and re-usable services without compromising either paradigm.