Hi, I'm developing some web services using CXF and in a few places it would be dead easy to simply return the entity object. The problem with doing this is that:
1.) Sending the domain object could result in a lot of unnecessary information being sent to the client. 2.) It will expose our data model (ie. inner workings of our application) to the client, which means if the data model changes, then the clients will need to change as well. 3.) We will need to fiddle the data model to deal with a marshalling issues on the client side (we have one low profile device and we already know this is going to be a problem). Another solution is to have an external data model that is used specifically for calls to and responses from the web services. The trouble with this approach is that it requires quite a bit of work because we'll need to map one set of objects to another. Am I correct in the way I view this or have I missed something? If the mapping layer and external data model are required, would anyone have any suggestions on how to tackle the mapping effort quickly? Thanks for your help, Tom
