Service discovery techniques in mobile e-commerce

With the rising number of web services in mobile E-commerce, service discovery has become an important feature in the future of E-commerce for mobile users. A service in the network can be any software or hardware entity that a user might be interested to utilize. Service discovery is the action of finding appropriate service provider for a requested service. When the location of the demanded service (typically the address of the service provider catering services such as shopping, auctions, edutainment, etc.) is retrieved, the user may further access the service and use it. Service discovery is an emerging field in the area of ubiquitous and pervasive computing owing to its mobile devices with limited resources. There are various service discovery techniques and protocols (proposed or/and already implemented) particularly tailored to specific set of objectives. With service discovery, devices may automatically discover network services including their properties, and services may advertise their existence in a dynamic way. This chapter discusses various mobile E-commerce issues with major focus on service discovery issue. It elaborates on syntax and semantic based various service discovery mechanisms and concludes with future directions to service discovery mechanism.