Enhancing Performance of Web Services in Mobile Applications by SOAP Compression

Abstract

since being proposed in May 2000, the SOAP Internet protocol has by now revolutionized application development by connecting graphic user interface desktop applications to powerful Internet servers using the standards of the internet: HTTP and XML. However the fact that it uses a text-based XML encoding unlike the traditional binary protocols, results in higher bandwidth consumption, bigger storage requirement and increased processing overhead. When using mobile devices, one additional question about the battery performance raises. This paper presents the results of implementing efficient compression and its positive impact to the overall performance of the mobile devices that use wireless communication with web services, in terms of significantly reduced bandwidth, quite improved response time, and extended battery life of the mobile devices.