Efficient SOAP processing in embedded systems

Abstract

The aim is to describe the technique that uses XML-based RPC communication with tiny servers, e.g. sensors and actuators in control systems, or controllers of advanced appliances. This form of communication uses textual messages that respect SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). The interface of the service can be described in WSDL (Web Service Description Language) and published on independent UDDI (Universal Directory, Discovery and Integration) servers. XML-based communication is efficient from the viewpoint of programming ease and flexibility of the design. The main drawback is the huge system support required and high overhead of parsing textual messages. Our research has been targeted to the design and implementation of a development infrastructure needed to implement SOAP services on small devices - even on those without a standard OS support. The main component is the compiler that takes a WSDL description of the service as its input and creates the SOAP analyzer. Our main concern has been to support C as the implementation language, but the technology is language independent and may be used with Java or C# when the target system allows.