I'm asked to create a small inventory system for our company. Now, we have several other apps that already have the information I need. For example, my inventory app need not have an employee table since there already is an HR system that has all our profiles. The employee_id which is one of the filed required in the inventory can be obtained from the database on the HR system. Would it be wise to create a webservice(server) that would allow me to retrive the list of employees along with their id and names through a webservice client(my inventory system)? Or would it be sufficient to have a local record(my own database) of the employees? Thanks!

since it's an inventory system you're creating, it wouldn't need to edit employee details right? in this case I think it would be a good idea to just expose a service in your HR system for retrieving employee information needed by your inventory system. you just have to take into consideration in the design that retrieving employee info can be a slow process (since it's a web service), so avoid being chatty with the web service. it would be good to have all the info you need returned by the web service in just one call.

if you want fast access to the employee info, you can store it in a local database. but as much as possible i'll avoid this because of duplication and possible inconsistency between your local data and the real HR data.

Thanks Andrei :)

is this a LAN based application with the database server on the same network? wouldn't it be easier if you just access the data via jdbc? i'm a big fan of web services but sometimes i think its an implementation overkill when you implement a webservice just for the heck of having one(i am guilty of this too).

Your current prtoblem is similar to what i had several years back. i used to work for a company that does warehousing and manufacturing of microchips and i was asked to build a system that they can use for inventory. being a implementation geek and having heard of SOA for the first time.. i decided to experiment on how loosely coupled systems would work in this type of scenario(since have some accounting data, rep information and some other reports that would interate with it). what i didnt realize was that the application server is located in remote facility, the wbe service service in another seperate server and the roundtrip.. well it was awful. the amount of data being passed thru the wire was enormous(lets just say we have around 2 million parts and around 1 million transactions per day).. we ended up scrapping the service and just building the app using the LAN base approach. One lesson I learned from that experience is that dont get over fancy... implementation cost can kill development time... and the next time you do service you should also implement data paging(hehehe! this is the problem of my very first ambitious implementation of web services).

;)

there are other good reasons why you'd want to go with a service-oriented architecture on this one. if the HR system is changed or updated from time to time, having a service insulates your consumer (the inventory app) from the details of the changes. if the HR system wouldn't change (beyond your control, say some other team is writing/maintaining it) then it's OK to "break encapsulation" and access the db directly via JDBC or some direct mechanism.

Hi guys! The app would be on the same network and on the same machine as the database server and the HR system. The HR system is being changed frequently(some enhancements are being made to it). What is LAN based approach BTW?

 

I have another question. Is it ok to use CRUD frameworks for applications such as the one I'm going to create? Ofcourse I can always customize the output after that.

ayos yan CRUD frameworks for rapid prototyping, as long as it would play well with your chosen approach (whether you expose your HR data via services or via direct database access over the LAN)

cruizer:

ayos yan CRUD frameworks for rapid prototyping, as long as it would play well with your chosen approach (whether you expose your HR data via services or via direct database access over the LAN)

just think if the framework you would be using will also play a role in future of the system. again, please note that a bad start will always lead to a bad end(well.. this is unless you are talking about TDD ;) right master cruizer :p)

Thank you for your efforts to answer my questions gentlemen! I wonder if there are any java guys reading this thread? I also need to know about the technologies I would need to implement the service.