Advantage for one over the other?
+2
A:
BlazeDS (technically AMF) - pro: binary format, so smaller, faster to transmit; con: pretty much Flash/Flex/AS only.
SOAP / Web Services - pro: works across many languages; con: very verbose, xml transmission with multiple layers, there are libraries in many languages to abstract this away, but regardless - a bigger "payload" gets sent every time.
REST - pro: lighter weight web service, can use XML messages or just text/JSON, piggybacks on top of existing HTTP, so anything that can talk HTTP can use REST; cons: still text transmission, but verbosity/complexity depends on individual, not spec. Custom messages, so need to document expected request/response formats and rely on developer to match them.
Nate
2009-08-21 04:32:43
+3
A:
My Census RIA Benchmark was created to compare AMF (BlazeDS) and SOAP or plain old XML (RESTful). Unfortunately SOAP is broken currently due to a JBoss 5.1 upgrade problem. However you can try the XML example instead of SOAP. The SOAP one is (was) slower due to all the extra parsing, transforming, etc. Usually AMF is the best option. And if you need a third-party endpoint you can always do SOAP and AMF to the same back-end services.
BTW: Due to a bug in Firefox click the Output panel on the right to start the test.
James Ward
2009-08-21 20:47:19
+1 Superb contribution.
HDave
2010-08-16 15:15:14
I'm working on a new version of my Census Benchmark. Check it out:http://www.jamesward.com/census2-flex/
James Ward
2010-08-16 16:22:40
I should also mention that SOAP is fixed in this new version.
James Ward
2010-08-16 18:01:11