Service-Oriented Architecture Supporting Mobile Access to an ERP System

With the emergence of Web Services application vendors and organizations with heterogeneous software architectures have started to move towards Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs). In a SOA, software functionalities are represented as discoverable services that are accessed through a network. SOA is a promising approach for Enterprise Application Integration problems. As computing becomes ubiquitous and users are supported by a wide range of mobile devices, enterprises have to think about integrating mobile clients into a SOA. We introduce an architecture that supports communication between mobile devices and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems equipped with a Web Services Façade. Theoretical foundations of Web Services and SOA and a prototypical implementation of mobile Web Services for an ERP system are discussed.