A Distributed System for Consuming Web Services and Caching Their Responses in MANETs

Due to the widespread of different types of hand-held computing devices whose bandwidth, memory size, and processing capacity are becoming comparable to those of desktop computers, mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) applications can now make use of proven distributed computing paradigms, in particular, web services. Indeed, in MANET environments, mobile computing devices can invoke web services methods to gain access to needed data, like stock quotes, currency exchange rates, etc. However, in addition to the communication costs, device mobility can cause temporary loss of connectivity to the server, thus rendering needed services inaccessible during those periods. For such reasons, caching of web service responses within the MANET can become beneficial for increasing data availability and reducing delays. This paper describes a distributed system designed for MANET environments to cache proxies of consumed web services and responses of their invoked methods. Furthermore, it analyzes the analytical and experimental performance of the system, and demonstrates the savings that could be realized after implementing it.