Web services for handheld tactical systems

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural pattern for constructing and deploying systems characterized by components called services that can be composed into applications using standard interface formats. While service orientation can reduce integration cost and enhance agility in response to changing situations, it has not been widely applied to support mobile users in ad hoc, wireless computing environments common to tactical military situations and first responders to humanitarian disasters. These environments are impoverished in terms of computational resources and network characteristics. This paper describes a set of prototypes that demonstrate the use of SOA in tactical environments in which users are employing handheld devices to obtain situational awareness data.