Question

If I have a hosted web application, is it good practise to split the web and api web service into 2 different projects/hosted applications in tomcat?

I can see that if people try and abuse the API it will effect the performance of the web application.

If I was to go with creating 2 separate projects (or if not initially but build for the potential to split things off), can I somehow share my hibernate data layer between 2 projects?

I’m using IntelliJ, how can I do this? Would it be to create a seperate module for hibernate (domain entities, Dao, and Service classes).

Answer 1

I wouldn’t say is a good practice in general, but maybe a good idea for some scenarios.

In a service oriented architecture, a service layer is consumed by not only the web layer, but potentially other clients. In this case is probably a good idea to build the web and service layers in separate servers.

Another case would be when you want to perform separate deployments, because e.g. work in both layers is done by different teams or in separate workstreams – I would question whether this is a good practice though as opposed to teams working in vertical features rather than in layers.

You can create your service layer in many different ways:

• As web services. When you need interoperability.
• As remote EJBs (this is possible in TomEE). When interoperability is not necessary.
• You can also create a combination of the both above, they are not mutually exclusive.

In terms of splitting the projects, you could create:

• A set of domain objects in a jar module that is to be shared between your web and service layers.
• A war module for your web layer.
• A jar module for your service layer interfaces that is a dependency for your web layer.
• A jar/war module for your service layer containing services and DAOs.