Handling an organization's communication needs with a single web service

Abstract

Successful communication of information via web services can be a complex and error-prone task, in large part due to network complexity between multiple fine-grained web services. This complexity can decrease ease of maintainability and increase inconsistency between the source and target destinations. A single all-encompassing web service that meets all of an organization's needs can be implemented that performs both generic or highly specific tasks. We have created a REST web service in Salesforce that handles multiple objects and performs specific tasks to test the viability of a single web service to meet all of an organization's needs. We found that one web service can be implemented to handle multiple or specific tasks with a single call. We show that as the number of database actions per single request increases so does the efficiency with which each individual action is processed. A reduction in the number of web services coupled with an increase of the functionality of a single web service provides many benefits when compared to multiple smaller web services.