A Dynamic Web Service Registry Framework for Mobile Environments

Abstract: Advancements in technology have transformed mobile devices from being mere communication widgets to versatile computing devices. Proliferation of these hand held devices has made them a common means to access and process digital information. Most web based applications are today available in a form that can conveniently be accessed over mobile devices. However, webservices (applications meant for consumption by other applications rather than humans) are not as commonly provided and consumed over mobile devices. Facilitating this and in effect realizing a service-oriented system over mobile devices has the potential to further enhance the potential of mobile devices. One of the major challenges in this integration is the lack of an efficient service registry system that caters to issues associated with the dynamic and volatile mobile environments. Existing service registry technologies designed for traditional systems fall short of accommodating such issues. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to manage service registry systems provided 'solely' over mobile devices, and thus realising an SOA without the need for high-end computing systems. The approach manages a dynamic service registry system in the form of light weight and distributed registries. We assess the feasibility of our approach by engineering and deploying a working prototype of the proposed registry system over actual mobile devices. A comparative study of the proposed approach and the traditional UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) registry is also included. The evaluation of our framework has shown propitious results in terms of battery cost, scalability, hindrance with native applications.