A Case Study on Simplifying Mobile Integration Using JAX-RS Reference Implementation for RESTful Web Services

This paper presents a case study conducted at a manufacturing enterprise focused on modernizing mobile application integration by transitioning from SOAP-based web services to RESTful APIs using the JAX-RS Reference Implementation (RI). The objective was to expose existing enterprise services in JSON/REST format to support mobile platforms, specifically iOS and Android. The study demonstrates that adopting JAX-RS RI for RESTful service development not only improves developer productivity and service maintainability but also enhances runtime performance and scalability. By utilizing JAX-RS RI, the development team was able to implement stateless, resource-oriented APIs that significantly simplified client-side development while maintaining backend compatibility with existing enterprise systems. Our findings indicate that RESTful services provide significant advantages over traditional SOAP-based architectures for mobile applications, including quantifiable improvements in performance, developer productivity, and system maintainability. The implementation resulted in a 65% reduction in response payload size, 40% improvement in response times, and 50% reduction in development effort for mobile client applications. Additionally, the RESTful approach facilitated easier debugging, testing, and cross-platform support through standard HTTP methods and human-readable JSON formats. The results confirm that RESTful services, implemented via JAX-RS RI, offer a scalable and effective alternative to SOAP for enterprise mobile integration scenarios.