I am writing an client side desktop app that will need to receive updates from a server. These updates would be few and far between (possibly 1 a week) but I would like them to be received as quickly as possible.
Is it hard on the battery to "subscribe" to the topic that will provide the updates through WAMP and let the app run in the background continuously? Would it be more efficient to periodically poll the server using a REST based API?
WAMP requires a persistent connection - so you have to deal with the battery drain for this. The only way to find out how much of a cost this is is to test it on the system you'll be running the app on. Then you can consider the actual trade offs involved versus a polling solution.
There are no implications on energy consumption when subscribing. However there are implications when persisting a connection for so long time for so few updates. You should reconsider your use of WAMP as your communication protocol I think.
