Hi Jeff,

While this forum is not architecture centric here's one view.

The generic/vague answer to your generic question is "it depends".

It's hard to answer a generic question with specifics without having detailed requirements of what you are trying to accomplish.

The answer would depend on a miriad of variables such as:

• Is the functionality being provided open to any anonymous client (ex: tell me the state & county for a given zip code)?
• Is the service going to be called via the internet or within a company's internal network?
• Should the service require authentication thus requiring an authentication layer or scheme?
• Does the service deal with private data which need to be protected (ex: SSN, date of birth, credit card numbers, etc.) thus requiring an encryption method or layer?
• Is the service data reach (either input or output) and does the client use the service schema natively vs. needing a data mapping and translation layer?
• Is the service going to be used by an organization which has certain architectural standards already in place for calling web services?
• Are there any requirements for monitoring the performance and uptime of the service?
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

Adrian