title: How scaleable really is a web-services based architecture?
body: <p>Whenever someone talks about a services-based architecture, they often mention scalability, often in the same breath. However, it seems that using services adds more overhead, rather than reducing it, since there is now a protocol, like SOAP or REST, involved. So, does a web services based architecture really add performance benefits as the number of users of, say, a web application, scales by perhaps an order of magnitude? Or are the scalability requirements simply offloaded onto the services, rather than the core application?</p>