Mobility Information Series - Webservice Architecture Comparison by RapidValue
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The document compares various web services data transfer frameworks for mobile applications, specifically examining SOAP vs REST and XML vs JSON. It finds that REST has better performance than SOAP, especially for mobile, due to using standard HTTP and being lighter weight. It also finds that JSON has better performance than XML, especially for mobile, due to being lighter weight. The document recommends REST and JSON for most mobile applications unless high security is required, in which case SOAP may be better.
Mobility Information Series - Webservice Architecture Comparison by RapidValue
- 1. Mobility Information Series Comparison between various Web Services Data Transfer Frameworks for Mobile Enabling Applications Author: Arun Chandran, Technical Architect, RapidValue Solutions SOAP REST vs XML JSON vs
- 2. ©RapidValue Solutions Contents 020202 Introduction SOAP vs. REST Performance Maintenance Security Transactions Messaging Additional Parameters XML vs. JSON Performance Scenario Timing CPU/Memory Summary About RapidValue 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 6 3 6 6 6 7 8
- 3. Introduction This document is a guide for developers and architects to select an appropriate framework to transfer data between server and mobile devices. It explains the difference between two popular web services architecture - SOAP & REST, and compares performance, maintenance, security, transactions, messaging etc. between the two frameworks. The document also examines the pros and cons of two commonly used data-interchange formats i.e. XML and JSON. Ideal Approaches for Mobile Devices There are two commonly used web services architecture - SOAP and REST. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and REST (Representational State Transfer) provide mechanisms for requesting information from endpoints (SOAP) or from resources (REST). SOAP has a more formal definition mechanism called WSDL (Web Services Definition Language) and is slightly more complex to implement than REST. REST uses the standard HTTP request and response mechanism, simplifies implementation and provides a looser coupling of client and server. REST has several advantages over SOAP. It is light weight. Therefore, data being passed will be lesser over the network (since data is passed over a network to a mobile device). This makes a considerable difference especially when Internet speed is low. The table below provides a brief comparison between SOAP and REST. SOAP vs. REST 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 An architectural style protocol Uses XML or JSON to send and receive data Simply calls services via URL path Result is readable which is just plain XML or JSON Transfer is over HTTP only Easy to call from JavaScript Performance is much better compared to SOAP - less CPU intensive, leaner code etc. A XML-based message protocol Uses WSDL for communication between consumer and provider Invokes services by calling RPC method Does not return human readable result Transfer is over HTTP. Also uses other protocols such as SMTP, FTP, etc. JavaScript can call SOAP, but it is difficult to implement Performance is not great compared to REST SOAP# REST ©RapidValue Solutions 020203
- 4. This section describes differences between SOAP and REST in more detail: Performance – REST is easier to use in JavaScript code as you can simply pass the data packet directly into a JavaScript array without any parsing, extracting and converting – lesser CPU intensive, since the CPU’s of mobile/tablets might be of lesser capacity compared to a laptop/desktop. – If the load of the server is considered, REST has slightly better performance since it accepts minimal overhead on top of HTTP. Usually SOAP brings with it a stack of different handlers and parsers. However, the performance difference by itself is not that large, but RESTful service is easier to scale up since there are no server side sessions. – If the performance of the network i.e. bandwidth is considered, REST has better performance, since it is only HTTP and no overhead. Therefore, if the service runs on top of HTTP, it cannot get much leaner than REST. Furthermore, if you encode your representations in JSON (as opposed to XML), you will save many more bytes. – REST reads can be cached, SOAP based reads cannot be cached. – Building clients, developing APIs, and understanding the technical documentation is easier with REST than with SOAP. In general, REST has better performance and scalability. Maintenance – SOAP supports SSL and WS-Security which includes enterprise security features. It provides identity through intermediaries, not just point-to-point (SSL). It also provides standard implementation of data integrity and data privacy. It supports some security tools that typical internet services do not require; in fact they are mostly needed in few enterprise scenarios. Security – REST is limited to HTTP which cannot provide two-phase commit across distributed transactional resources, whereas SOAP is capable. Transactions ©RapidValue Solutions 020204
- 5. The table below provides a brief comparison between XML and JSON: Messaging – REST does not have a standard messaging system and expects clients to deal with communication failures by retrying. SOAP has successful/retry logic built-in and provides end-to-end reliability even through SOAP intermediaries. – Most mobile SDKs and jQuery support REST – REST supports synchronous and asynchronous process for mobiles – REST makes interface utilization easier in the client (device). Therefore, not only your server becomes leaner but the client too. Additional Parameters XML vs. JSON1 There are various formats available to transfer data between client and server. The most commonly used ones are JSON and XML. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format which is both human-readable and machine-readable. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays called objects. In spite of its relationship to JavaScript, it is language- independent with parsers available for many languages. JSON format is often used for serializing and transmitting structured data over a network connection. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application. It serves as an alternative to XML. 1 2 3 4 5 6 No Validation No namespaces Parsing is just an eval. Therefore it is fast. In JavaScript, we can work with objects-run time evaluation of types A JavaScript object JSON is light weight compared to XML XSD Validation Includes namespaces Requires parsing. xml doc is parsed through parameters like xpath etc. JavaScript work with strings. May require additional parsing Write JavaScript to parse the xml objects Heavy compared to JSON XML# JSON ©RapidValue Solutions 020205
- 6. Performance Large numbers of objects are used in order to achieve accurate average measurements. The client sends one million encoded objects to the server for both JSON and XML. The results are as follows: This section explains the difference between JSON and XML in the form of an experiment. This section consists of test case results from a case study - research conduced by department of Computer Science, Montana State University – Bozeman, USA. These test cases are designed and implemented to compare transmission times and resource utilizations of JSON and XML.The results illustrate the differences between JSON and XML encoding under varying transmission scenario. Scenario 2 : A time-consuming transmission of large number of objects. Number of Objects Total time to transfer million objects (ms) Average time (ms) 1 million 4546694.78 4.55 1 million 78257.9 0.08 JSONParameters XML Timing JSON 86.13 54.59 13.08 45.41 27.37 29.69XML Average % System CPU Utilization Average % User CPU Utilization Format Average % Memory Utilization CPU/Memory Source: 1 Wikipedia definitions 2 Comparison of JSON and XML Data Interchange Formats: A Case Study by Nurzhan Nurseitov, Michael Paulson, Randall Reynolds, Clemente Izurieta, Montana State University ©RapidValue Solutions 020206
- 7. Summary – If the application requires transferring highly secure data, then the best option will be to use SOAP. – If high security is not a concern, then REST would be the ideal choice as REST services is easier to develop, maintain and performance of the application will be better - consumes lesser CPU memory, works well at lower bandwidth even during high transactions. – JSON is recommended over XML for data transmission over the Internet, especially when interactions with mobile devices are involved since it is light weight data-interchange format. Based on our experience and usage of various web service frameworks, our recommendations are as follows: If you have any questions or need further information, please do write to us. ©RapidValue Solutions 020207
- 8. About RapidValue A global leader in digital transformation for enterprise providing end-to-end mobility, omni-channel, IoT and cloud solutions. Armed with a large team of experts in consulting, UX design, application development, integration and testing, along with experience delivering projects worldwide, in mobility and cloud, we offer a wide range of services across industry verticals. We deliver services to the world’s top brands, fortune 1000 companies, Multinational companies and emerging start-ups. We have www.rapidvaluesolutions.com www.rapidvaluesolutions.com/blog +1 877.643.1850 contactus@rapidvaluesolutions.com January 2013 offices in the United States, the United Kingdom and India.