12.3 MOBILE WEB SERVICES
The service-oriented architecture (SOA) model is widely exploited in modern scientific and business-oriented scenarios to implement distributed systems in which applications and components interact each other independently from platforms and languages.
Currently Web services are the most important implementation of the SOA model. Their popularity is mainly due to the adoption of universally accepted Internet technologies such as XML and HTTP. The use of Web services fosters the integration of distributed applications, processes, and data, optimizing the deployment of systems and improving their efficiency. In particular, integration represents an important competitive factor in business-to-business (B2B) scenarios, where information systems can be very heterogeneous and complex.
Recently, a growing interest in the use of Web services in mobile environments has been registered. Mobile Web services make it possible to integrate mobile devices with server applications running on different platforms, allowing users to access and compose a variety of distributed services from their personal devices.
The remainder of this section discusses the basic characteristics of the SOA model, introduces the main Web services concepts, and discusses current solutions for the implementation of Web services in mobile environments.
12.3.1 The Service-Oriented Architecture
The SOA is a model for building flexible, modular, and interoperable software applications. Concepts behind ...
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