A Framework for Providing Mobile Web Services

Web services are moving towards mobile world as a new emerging technology for applications communication. Mobile devices can operate as service consumers or service providers. Most approaches nowadays support consuming web services from mobile devices. This paper introduces a new framework called “Mobile Web Server” for providing mobile web services for not only mobile devices but also web applications. The proposed model is based on the existing web service and mobile technology standards in order to provide software and platform independent mobile services. As well, it reduces the overhead on mobile devices and the wireless network, as they are resource constraints, by presenting a web server which hosts and manages all mobile services. The mobile web server communicates different mobile applications that belong to different mobile network operators to enable services exchange between various types of mobile and web applications. It also addresses the security issues of provided and consumed mobile services through mobile network operators. Moreover, the framework supports the provision of both static as well as dynamic mobile services. Some practical applications for the framework are also introduced to show how the framework works.