Question

As a SOAP web services developer, I’m curious about what techniques I can implement to optimize our SOAP responses at the raw xml level. Currently our enterprise web service allows clients to perform tens of thousands of operations in batch, but my team is seeking ways of optimizing even further, down to how we format our xml. I’m aware of MTOM and XOP, but what are the techniques I can use at the raw xml level to reduce the payload? More specifically, I’ve heard of using one-character namespaces, using numeric identifiers, stripping any unnecessary formatting or comments, and things in this vein, but what are some other good techniques that are used to minimize the payload?

Answer 1

These are some suggestions you might find helpful.

1. If your webservices have some ‘context’ in which they operate – you might want to look at WS-Context .
   WS-Context introduces the terminology of a Context-Store to retrieve the context associated with
   the URIs in the SOAP message. In addition to minimizing message size, the use of the Context-store
   guarantees integrity of exchanging messages.
   1. The research paper Optimizing Web Service Messaging Performance Using a Context Store
      for Static Data(pdf) documents the use of WS-Context – which you might find helpful.
2. MTOM, XOP – you have already mentioned you are aware.
3. You can also change the length of varibles (example: from interest_rate to intRate) which would decrease payload size – while maintaing readability. [as you already mention]
4. Going to the next level – you might look at the underlying SOAP parsers on the server and if there are ways to improve them.

I have no data to support the improvement in performance by use of these methods.