A Comparative Study of SOAP Vs REST Web Services Provisioning Techniques for Mobile Host

Abstract

Web services are moving towards mobile wireless world as a new emerging technology for mobile applications communication. Now mobile devices can operate as web service providers due to the advancement in mobile device capabilities and it has also become possible due to improvement in web service development technologies and wireless communication techniques. Today’s most important need is to provide uninterrupted, lightweight, continuous web services to resource constrained mobile device in wireless environment. This paper presents a detailed comparison between two frameworks used for providing web services through SOAP and REST and also discusses the problems and challenges in these two frameworks. With the help of comparison we can decide which frame work is most suitable for wireless environment and fulfills the current needs of accessing lightweight mobile web services continuously from resource constrained mobile device.

Keywords Mobile Web Services, SOAP, REST, RESTful