WEB Services for Ubiquitous Mobile Device Applications

A WEB service is as a self-describing, self-contained software module available via a network, such as the Internet, which completes tasks, solves problems, or conducts transactions on behalf of a user or application. WEB services constitute a distributed computer infrastructure made up of many different interacting application modules trying to communicate over private or public networks (including the Internet and WEB) to virtually form a single logical system. Mobile WEB services target embedded devices. In other words, they enable handheld devices to interact with servers in a standardized way, regardless of operating systems, platforms, and programming languages. WEB services provide good opportunities for developing ubiquitous mobile client applications, allowing the delivery of information to users anytime and from anywhere. This paper brings to focus some general considerations required in designing and building WEB services that target ubiquitous mobile applications as consumers. The research work presented here was carried out under the UbiPOL FP7 research project, which aims to develop a ubiquitous platform for policy making, funded within the grant agreement nr. 248010. The main achievement of this work is the analysis of several WEB service frameworks and choosing the most appropriate one for developing the UbiPOL platform.