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What
is Wireless JMS Middleware?
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-Wireless MOM Market Forecast |
According to a recent Gartner report:
Given message-oriented-middleware's (MOM) popularity, scalability, flexibility, and affinity
with mobile and wireless architectures, by 2004, MOM will emerge as
the dominant form of communication middleware for linking mobile and enterprise
applications (0.7 probability).
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| -Micro
Browsers Are Not Enough! |
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Wireless
platforms based upon markup languages such as WML have not proven very
successful yet. For example, WAP users often complain about a poor user
experience due mostly to lack of interesting content, to an awkward interaction
model, and to errors occurring when a device loses network coverage for
a limited period of time.
In my opinion, deploying WAP over
a faster bearer, such as GPRS, will not solve the problem either. I believe
the problem is more fundamental and relies in the fact that the interaction
model that is used successfully on the wireline Web, was simply transferred
to the wireless Web. This was done without taking into consideration that
mobile devices are used in a completely different manner than PCs at home
or at the office. |
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-Wireless JMS Middleware to the Rescue! |
| I
believe that in the mobile world, user experience is greatly improved by
providing an interaction model, in which the user does not have to go and
search for content using a browser, but where the user is alerted when
something interesting happens. Such an alert should take the user's preferences
and geographic location into consideration. Thus ensuring timely
delivery of what an individual user considers to be critical or useful
information without the need to actively search for it.
User experience is further improved
by installing customized applications on mobile devices, which allow the
user to continue working with the mobile application even when disconnected
from the network.
Those applications are best built
using a "store-and-forward" communication paradigm, which is provided through
appropriate messaging middleware (MOM) technology on the device.
I believe that for the development
of mobile applications, messaging middleware offers a much more powerful
and adequate paradigm than CORBA or RMI.
To develop this type of mobile application,
the approach of my company Softwired
is to use Java technology straight through from the mobile devices to the
application servers. Our approach consists of deploying customized Java
applications on the mobile device, and on the server computers.
Then, we use a packet-oriented wireless
bearer such as SMS, GPRS, CDPD, or Mobitex to connect the mobile devices
to the back-end servers in a flexible and scalable manner.
To make the interactions between
the clients and the servers reliable and secure, we deploy standards-based
Java
messaging middleware technology on the mobile devices and on the servers.
For that we rely on our iBus
product family, industry's only end-to-end
JMS (Java Message
Service) middleware solution. |
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| -Application
Areas |
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application areas of such end-to-end, wireless enabled JMS middleware are
manifold:
Mobile workforce automation,
and other Business-to-Employee (B2E) systems: These require customized
client applications, offline and online operation, as well as high efficiency.
M-Banking, M-Finance,
M-Commerce,
and other Business-to-Consumer (B2C) systems: Only wireless messaging
middleware can guaranteed exactly-once delivery of transactions issued
by a mobile user.
Supply chain management,
and other Business-to-Business (B2B) systems.
Embedded systems, remote-administration
of machines, manufacturing control, and other Machine-to-Machine (M2M)
communication systems: Messaging middleware supports the immediate delivery
of signals and other important data.
Games, chat systems, and other
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications: Messaging allows for highly interactive
communication.
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| -Wireless
JMS Deployment |
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Wireless JMS (WJMS) deployment consists of Java-enabled mobile devices
(PDAs, Communicators, JavaPhones, etc.) with a WJMS client library installed.
Optionally, the devices provide a persistent database in order to implement
store-and-forward communication.
View
Architectural Diagram.
The devices use a wireless network
to communicate with a WJMS Gateway service. The Gateway is a software component
able of receiving WJMS messages from a wireless network, and of relaying
these messages to a server-side JMS provider. The JMS provider either is
a stand-alone JMS messaging server such as iBus//MessageServer,
or a full-fledged J2EE application server such as BEA
WebLogic.
The server-side application logic
of the mobile system is implemented in the form of stand-alone JMS applications,
of EJB MessageDrivenBeans, or of both.
This results in a clean end-to-end
solution, in which we use one powerful communication abstraction
straight-through from the clients to the servers: JMS. No need for format
transcoders in the form of transcoding engines, Servlets, or server pages. |
| -Wireless
JMS Resources |
Introductory
Articles
"Introducing Wireless JMS". Download
PDF.
Chapter 11 of the book "Professional
JMS Programming", Wrox Press. Download
Chapter. Order
book.
Chapter 12 of the Book "Professional
Mobile Java Programming", Wrox Press. Order
book.
Presentation Slides
"An Introduction to Wireless JMS". Download.
Wireless JMS Software
iBus//Mobile from Softwired. Download
free copy. Visit
product pages.
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