Abstract

Many enterprises are creating mobile applications for their internal staff, for their customers, or both.  These applications need access to data, business rules, and business processes.  For architectural and security reasons these applications are typically built to access remotes services that provide the data and functionality that are required by the users. 

Because many web applications have been built over the last decade using SOAP-based web services, many architects have made the assumption that these same SOAP-based services are the best choice for mobile applications.  We believe that the use of RESTful services, with data in JSON format is a better choice for mobile applications whether the client device technology is iOS, Android, Blackberry, or even Mobile Web.

In this white paper we look at the differences between SOAP and REST for use by mobile applications, analyze typical assumptions about them, and offer an a