Distributed File Sharing Using Web Services

As mobile devices and wireless network access are becoming more pervasive, people are more likely to access and share files any time and any place. A variety of distributed file systems have been developed to support file sharing and distribution. But the problems such as high complexity, low flexibility, low data integrity, management difficulties, low security, and high susceptibility to network performance remain. Hence, file sharing and distribution technology keep evolving through time. Nowadays, Web services have become a major server-side technology, especially for cloud computing. Web services facilitate deployment of interoperable and reusable computing units across different platforms. SOAP and REST are two approaches for developing Web services. In this paper, we present the architecture and APIs of a distributed file system that is efficient for sharing distributed files using RESTful Web services. The system is validated through simulations and the results show the proposed system is feasible and has its advantages.