For maximum performance it is recommended to use a simple bootstrap file for the server component. Using Zend_XmlRpc_Server inside a Zend_Controller is strongly discouraged to avoid the overhead.

Services change over time and while webservices are generally less change intense as code-native APIs, it is recommended to version your service. Do so to lay grounds to provide compatibility for clients using older versions of your service and manage your service lifecycle including deprecation timeframes.To do so just include a version number into your URI. It is also recommended to include the remote protocol name in the URI to allow easy integration of upcoming remoting technologies. http://myservice.ws/1.0/XMLRPC/.

Most of the time it is not sensible to expose business objects directly. Business objects are usually small and under heavy change, because change is cheap in this layer of your application. Once deployed and adopted, web services are hard to change. Another concern is I/O and latency: the best webservice calls are those not happening. Therefore service calls need to be more coarse-grained than usual business logic is. Often an additional layer in front of your business objects makes sense. This layer is sometimes referred to as Remote Facade. Such a service layer adds a coarse grained interface on top of your business logic and groups verbose operations into smaller ones.