Transparent caching for nomadic WS clients

As mobile devices become more pervasive they will emerge as a standard platform for hosting Web service clients. Unlike their "static" counterparts, mobile devices are typically connected via a wireless network forcing them to deal with constrained bandwidth and the sudden loss of connectivity. This paper focuses on the use of caching SOAP request-response pairs in order to compensate for fluctuating bandwidth and loss of connectivity. We introduce the concept of embedded SOAP caching, highlighting the need for meta-data as a means to support it. A novel SOAP cache (CRISP) that can be embedded into the application or used as an independent proxy-cache is presented and evaluated under various loads and settings. The evaluation of CRISP shows that caching of SOAP traffic is not only an effective means to compensate for loss of connectivity but also enables reducing network loads which is particularly interesting when dealing with bandwidth constraint wireless connections.