First I want to clearify that I mean by reverse engineering something like "decompiling" and getting back the original source code or something similiar.
Yesterday I read a question about someone who wanted to protect his python code from "getting stolen" in other words: he didn't like that someone can read his python code.
The interesting thing I read was that someone said that the only reliable way to "protect" his code from getting reverse engineered is by using a Webservice.
So I could actually only write some GUIs in Python, PHP, whatever and do the "very secret code" I want to protect via a Webservice. (Basically sending variables to the host and getting results back).
Is it really impossible to reverse engineer a Webservice (via code and without hacking into the Server)? Will this be the future of modern commercial applications? The cloud-hype is already here. So I wouldn't wonder.
I'm very sorry if this topic was already discussed, but I couldn't find any resources about this.
EDIT: The whole idea reminds me of AJAX. The code is executed on the server and the content is sent to the client and "prettified". The client himself doesnt see what php-code or other technology is behind.
Wow, this is awesome! I've never thought it this way, but you could create a program that crawls an api, and returns as an output a django/tastypie software that mimics everything the api does.
By calling the service, and reading what it says, you can parse it, and begin to see the relationships between objects inside the api. Having this, you can create the models, and tastypie takes it from this point.
The awesome thing about this, is that normal people (or at least not backend developers) could create an api just by describing what they want to be as an output. I've seen many android/iphone developers creating a bunch of static xml or json, so they can call their service, and start the frontend development. Well what if that was enough? Take some xml/json files as input, get a backend as an output.
Reverse Engineer a program working as a webservice, the future?