Considerations when invoking services on different servers

One of the benefits of service-oriented architecture is the ability for consumers to use services that exist in other service modules. To balance the workload equitably, you should install applications on different servers in a cell and those applications should reside on different physical servers.

One of the advantages of Workflow Server is the ability to distribute the application workload across multiple servers in a cell. This distribution allows for better workload balancing among the various servers in the cell and maximizes the maintainability of the computing resources because there is only one copy of an application or service in the server. Thus, an application on server A could require a service installed in server B in the cell. To use services in this manner, you must configure communications between the servers. The type of configuration you perform depends on whether the calling service component invokes the service asynchronously or synchronously.

Related topics describe how to configure the systems for both asynchronous and synchronous invocations.