Tuesday, May 7, 2002
Web Services in mobile applications?
Posted by Andy Sjostrom in "THOUGHT" @ 04:37 AM
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2863482,00.html
I just spotted the ZDNet article "Can Web services drive mobile apps?" The article looks at PDAs from an Enterprise perspective with the question: What will it take to get PDAs "provide a genuine lifeline to a company's powerful mission-critical applications and rich data resources"?
(Before I go on, here's the short version on what a Web Service is: a Web Service is a program running on an Internet site. The program can be called from a user or from another program using a standard language called SOAP, which is based on XML. The response from the program is also formatted in XML. All this makes Web Services and SOAP a perfect platform to build distributed applications upon, including mobile applications - potentially.)
The author Adrian Mello identifies Web Services as having a seemingly "perfect fit for mobile users", and then goes on to say: "there are a number of problems with Web services technology that limit its potential for mobile users".
I think the article does a good job in explaining some of the difficulties in getting Web Services to match the needs in a mobile application setting. There are however, a couple of things in the article that I disagree with. Adrian mentions the .NET Compact Framework and says it is "... designed to mitigate some of the limits of mobile computing but are unlikely to provide many of the features usually associated with Web services technology."
Nothing could be further from the truth. Web Services, SOAP/XML support are core fundamentals of the .NET Compact Framework making it a premier mobile devices platform for distributed applications.
The other conclusion found in the article that I disagree with is that we have to wait for Web Services to mature before this technology can really deliver on its promises. Well, ok. I agree with the conclusion. But only for another week or so... (boy, do we have something cooking for you guys!)
I just spotted the ZDNet article "Can Web services drive mobile apps?" The article looks at PDAs from an Enterprise perspective with the question: What will it take to get PDAs "provide a genuine lifeline to a company's powerful mission-critical applications and rich data resources"?
(Before I go on, here's the short version on what a Web Service is: a Web Service is a program running on an Internet site. The program can be called from a user or from another program using a standard language called SOAP, which is based on XML. The response from the program is also formatted in XML. All this makes Web Services and SOAP a perfect platform to build distributed applications upon, including mobile applications - potentially.)
The author Adrian Mello identifies Web Services as having a seemingly "perfect fit for mobile users", and then goes on to say: "there are a number of problems with Web services technology that limit its potential for mobile users".
I think the article does a good job in explaining some of the difficulties in getting Web Services to match the needs in a mobile application setting. There are however, a couple of things in the article that I disagree with. Adrian mentions the .NET Compact Framework and says it is "... designed to mitigate some of the limits of mobile computing but are unlikely to provide many of the features usually associated with Web services technology."
Nothing could be further from the truth. Web Services, SOAP/XML support are core fundamentals of the .NET Compact Framework making it a premier mobile devices platform for distributed applications.
The other conclusion found in the article that I disagree with is that we have to wait for Web Services to mature before this technology can really deliver on its promises. Well, ok. I agree with the conclusion. But only for another week or so... (boy, do we have something cooking for you guys!)
