Developing Applications For Mobile Platforms Like Pda example essay topic

Mobile computing has its own requirements on middle ware solutions that are most popular n-tier formula today. Mobiles require small-footprint applications that can access business objects deployed in existing middle ware servers. The most common answer to this need is a copy and sync architecture. Data copied to and received from the PDA application is later synced with the main system by a serial connection and proprietary sync hing software.

Obviously, this system has serious flaws: the applications tend to be bulky and resource demanding, data consistency is unsatisfactory due to multiply users making changes offline. Moreover, live access to critical data is denied, limiting key benefits of mobile computing. There is a growing need for a lightweight, easy-to-implement architecture that allows smooth access to distributed objects from an Internet-enabled PDA. Developing applications for mobile platforms, like PDA, clearly put unique requirements. Such a device usually has 1-4 MB of memory, so minimizing hardware requirements for such application is critical. Low-bandwidth is still a sad reality for many places and situations, so firewall security can mean no access at all.

In addition, the toolkit's for developing PDA applications are scarce, even without considering access to EJBs or CORBA. Once typical practice was usage of a socket connection, but as security concerns grow, systems administrators are reluctant to provide that type of connection. In addition to the above-mentioned narrow points, PDA has no inherent security, so developers must take this into account since no mobile device will ever be popular if it a potential vital information leakage. Also it should not be forgotten many proprietary data transfer formats that should be brought to a unified one, otherwise application development for such devices will be greatly obscured.

Once the above-mentioned bottlenecks eliminated, mobile and distributed computing will create a powerful wireless networks, Wireless Application Framework (WAF) is concept currently being developed should bring an array of applications, interaction protocols into a unified system, . Main components of mobile distributed system will be different platform PDA and other mobile devices, communicating with distributed server environment. Although the main task of WAF will be used to instigate online processing, the main goal of WAF is to provide framework for creating loosely connected and asynchronous distributed systems. Data consistency and integrity will be achieved through periodic asynchronous data exchange between WAF server environment and mobile devices. The history clearly shows that the future of computing is not with a desktop computer as we know it today, it will be with a network computer and Internet.

The popularity of the Web has urged creation of "Browser / Network Computing" and n-tier architecture perfectly fits this vision providing necessary means to create upcoming flexible, readily available networks. N-Tier architectures are truly Net-Centric, these technologies quickly become indispensable for enterprise application development and companies around the world are adopting it in order to get ahead in the emerging net economy. N-tier technology will empower and popularize a great variety of network-based devices, such as Internet Browsers, Web-TV, Smart-Phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's), to meet the need of businesses and individuals alike..