Web Services in mobile applications?

[Andy Sjostrom]

<a href="http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2863482,00.html">http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2863482,00.html</a><br /><br />I just spotted the ZDNet article <a href="http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2863482,00.html">"Can Web services drive mobile apps?"</a> 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"?<br /><br />(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.)<br /><br />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".<br /><br />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."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!)

[jpzr]

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!)

Andy, I just want to add, that according to many people who are professionally analysing the wireless market, I have seen prevailing opinions that SERVER SIDE SERVICES IS WHERE BIG BUCKS are, not mobile applications (i.e. applications executing inside of mobile devices). I think that Microsoft also understands it with its .NET strategy. Bear in mind however that .NET Compact Framework can run standalone, without any services, but Microsoft propably prefers that it is very seldom case...

And Microsoft, having both server side and mobile side in 1 hand is well positioned. Take Palm which has almost no server side and you will understand why Palm in long term is destinied to die...

[alex_kac]

Web services for mobile apps will be a great thing. In fact, Pocket Informant already is being built to support some web services for a future release (not the next one).

[Daniel]

Webservices are server based technology but that allow you to do some of the processing on the client using (if we're talking purly about MS) the .NET Compact Framework. It means that you can write what looks like a "normal" app on your PPC but have it calling & operating on data retrieved from a web service.

It's an excellent concept.

Daniel