When making a remote call, keep in mind that the remote call will consume resources of the system. In a Java application server, you use a thread to wait for that resource and a socket on the operating system, which translates into an additional connection through the firewall. Remote calls can also cause additional network traffic if they are not designed properly. Remote calls have the disadvantage of overhead, of getting the remote connection. Be very cautious with any code that calls external resources. It is not just a matter of whether to release the resource but whether you also have a timeout in place to release the resource, in the event that the remote resource doesn’t respond. You also should be concerned with how often you are going to call a remote call and how much data you will get back. Be very aware of how fine grained your remote calls are. If you keep them too fine grained, you can bog down the network or servers with the amount of times you need to go to the back-end system for more data.
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