The SFORCE API works over http (port 80) and https (port 443)

You will likely want secure communications at all times, so you do not have to

deal with any other ports. Open 80 or 443 in both directions and you are good to go.

The port numbers are where the XML-RPC/SOAP listeners are located.

The xml structure of the message is not related to the ports used, and therefore the bean implementation is also not related.

You will likely find you will have a better architecture if you try to implement some features first, to see how it works. Once you do this, you can better see how to divide up the parts of the system.

Its not obvious, and you will find that getting started is a real pant-load.

Beans are good (value beans) because if they are properly created, there are existing bean serializers in the various Java libraries available. This means that value beans with native XML/SOAP data types (String, Long, Integer, etc.) can be coerced into the XML structures that SForce would like with very little work to the BeanSerializer class.

If you are thinking about EJB's you may find that they give you little value add without a lot of additional SForce API 'scaffolding' code to wrap everything in.

Just my opinion though.

Al G

AlterPoint