It is not uncommon for discussions that revolve around the SOAP API in SugarCRM to include some measure of criticism, but how much of that criticism is actually warranted?
SOAP --the protocol-- has always been critiqued for not being an optimal method for communication between distributed systems, in short, poor performance. Thus, it is no surprise that some of that criticism should find its way into conversations about the SugarCRM SOAP API.
Some folks in the broader web development world have altogether given up on SOAP, favoring RESTful web services. True to the trends in the general web development community, many SugarCRM developers have also tossed aside any notions of using the SOAP API, and SugarCRM addresses this trend by also providing a REST API. However, this growing resentment towards all things SOAP makes me question whether it is justified, and if so, what can be done about it?
Before we go any further I should state I do not discount the point that test results can prove REST to be faster than SOAP, but I do think many performance problems attributed to the SugarCRM SOAP API can be overcome with some fine tuning of code.
In my experience, the most common source of performance problems has come from the use of the set_relationship() method. Said method is used to create a relationship between records, for example, link an opportunity to a contact. All efforts should be made to reduce the number of times this method is called within your code.
