Service-Oriented Architecture Supporting Mobile Access to an ERP System

Abstract: With the emergence of Web Services application vendors and organiza-tions with heterogeneous software architectures have started to move towards Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs). In a SOA, software functionalities are re-presented as discoverable services that are accessed through a network. SOA is a promising approach for Enterprise Application Integration problems. As comput-ing becomes ubiquitous and users are supported by a wide range of mobile de-vices, 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 im-plementation of mobile Web Services for an ERP system are discussed