Protocols for connecting ERP solutions with tablet PC

We can consider different protocols to enable connection between enterprise data and hand held devices such as Apple iPhone and Google Android to write software programs for android applications and iPhone applications. They are SOAP, JSON and XML-RPC.

SOAP has a security extension which can be used to define features such as encryption, data integrity  However being an XML standard, it only defines the standard. XML-RPC provides no such feature. JSON has security issues as the data passed is generally directly executed by the server, hence susceptible to data injection.

SOAP

Advantages

• Widely used.
• Suitable for complex structures.
• Standardized by W3C.

Disadvantages

• Consumes larger bandwidth for small data.

JSON

Advantages

• Handy for light weight data transfer
• Can take almost half of the bandwidth as XML for transferring the same data
• AJAX with JSON has got accepted well since JavaScript has the inbuilt capability to handle JSON data.
• It does not require parsing libraries in an application as XML does

Disadvantages

• It is not standardized
• Not recommended for complex structures

XML-RPC

Advantages

• Extremely easy to understand, implement, and debug
• Lighter than SOAP.

Disadvantages

• Not being maintained by a standards committee
• Lot more more complex than SOAP. eg., passing an object as an argument to a function.