Exposing GNU Octave Signal Processing Functions as Extensible Markup Language (XML) Web Services

The set of industry standards for Extensible Markup Language (XML) Web services, such as SOAP and Web Services Description Language (WSDL), enables Internet-wide, implementation-independent distributed computing. Many modern lower-end devices (e.g., mobile phones) can host relatively lightweight client software for SOAP messaging, but do not have resources for hosting GNU Octave (which requires 65 MB of run-time memory). Our project enables that such devices can use GNU Octave signal processing functions. We are the first who have exposed 74 GNU Octave signal processing functions as Web services. A client submits over the Internet a SOAP request in a HTTP message to the Web service. At the Web service side, Apache Tomcat servelet container accepts this message and extracts SOAP content, Apache Axis analyzes this SOAP content, our Java Web service code invokes our new Java-based Octave API, which in turn invokes GNU Octave that performs numerical calculations. The response passes from Octave, through Octave API, our Java Web service code, Axis, to Tomcat that sends an HTTP message with SOAP reply to the client. Our solutions can be also re-used for exposing any program in GNU Octave (or MATLAB) as a Web service