Mobile devices use wireless networks that have limited range. Therefore, they may not always be connected to a network. This kind of intermittent connectivity in mobile devices has been one of the factors inhibiting enterprise-level adoption of pervasive mobile applications. Occasionally Connected Computing (OCC) deals with this problem. The challenge that mobile application developers face today is to develop applications that will let users interact uniformly with the application regardless of the connection status.
In the recent past, Web Services have appeared as a key technology for mobility with support from leading mobile platforms. However, leveraging Web Services for occasionally connected mobility applications falls flat because of a lack of reliability. In this article we present a framework that enables OCC using Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM), which can be a catalyst for enabling occasionally connected mainstream mobility applications. For our framework, WSRM provides the reliability required for Web Service communication in occasionally connected environments.
