If (by some chance) you should need to connect a .NET client to a Java Serverside application, don't believe the
hype about webservices being slow. TEST you application – the results might surprise you. In our specific example
we tested 3 commercial .NET <-> Java communication tools, as well as Axis as the
webservice implementation. One of the three products performed better than webservices in terms of total speed and
scalability – and the pricing of that made it easy to throw clusters of webservice service machines in order to
match that performance. I'm not ashamed to admit that result surprised me somewhat!

The lesson: when concerned about performance, TEST, don't rely on your intuition.

Updated: for some reason it seems I lost this entry soon after posting it. I'm not sure why that was.