Efficient Web Services in Mobile Networks

Efficient solutions for Web services on mobile devices would allow truly global, platform independent, and interoperable information access, anywhere and at any time. While Web services are continuously gaining ground, they are commonly reserved for use on personal computers and high-capacity servers. However, mobile devices are gradually becoming more advanced in terms of processing resources and wireless communication capabilities, making it feasible to use Web services on such devices as well. Some of the challenges related to mobile Web services are limited bandwidth, high communication latency and high communication cost. In this paper, we focus on techniques for reducing XML overhead as a solution to overcome these challenges. Compression is a well known technique for reducing bandwidth consumption. Our contribution is an evaluation of compression techniques for use with Web services in mobile networks. In addition to performing simulations, we have verified our results using real GPRS and UMTS network connections.