OBject EXchange - Comparison To HTTP

Comparison To HTTP

OBEX is similar in design and function to HTTP in providing the client with a reliable transport for connecting to a server and may then request or provide objects. But OBEX differs in many important respects:

  • HTTP is normally layered above a TCP/IP link. OBEX is commonly implemented on an IrLAP/IrLMP/Tiny TP stack on an IrDA device. In Bluetooth, OBEX is implemented on a Baseband/ACL/L2CAP/RFCOMM stack. Other such "bindings" of OBEX are possible.
  • HTTP uses human-readable text, but OBEX uses binary-formatted type-length-value triplets named "Headers" to exchange information about a request or an object. These are much easier to parse by resource-limited devices.
  • HTTP transactions are inherently stateless; generally a HTTP client opens a connection, makes a single request, receives its response, and either closes the connection or makes other unrelated requests. In OBEX, a single transport connection may bear many related operations. In fact, recent additions to the OBEX specification allow an abruptly closed transaction to be resumed with all state information intact.

Read more about this topic:  OBject EXchange

Famous quotes containing the words comparison to and/or comparison:

    “In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
    —Irving Kristol (b. 1920)

    “But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)