Sun Microsystems is to develop further component-based
applications for wireless devices.
Company executives have unveiled an internal project called
JavaFirst, which will examine how to make rich applications
interact with services available on J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise
Edition) back-ends.
Sun's vice president of developer tools Rich Green explained the
next generation of enterprise applications for mobile devices will
see run-time and application logic split between the client and
server.
"The whole point of JavaFirst is really taking all these web
services and making them available to mobile devices," Green
said.
Developers creating Java-based applications for mobile devices
can map the interfaces from services-based application
architectures to a set of client stubs which allow the client and
server to talk.
Sun is already demonstrating beta applications such as Mobile
Jolt, which provides access to a corporate personnel database via
wireless connectivity to a mobile phone.
Jeff Anders, Sun group marketing manager, explained other
examples that fall under the Java First banner including SunONE
Studio Mobile Edition, Sun's Project Relator, which maps a rich
client interface to server-side Java code, and an application
called Javon that also maps mobile clients to J2EE back ends.
Meanwhile, Juan Dewar, Sun's senior director of marketing for
the consumer, mobile systems and solutions software division, said
Sun is anticipating the day when mobile devices can access both
carrier-based and Wi-Fi networks.
Mobile phone manufacturers have a number of Wi-Fi projects under
way, Dewar said.
Sun's primary role with the manufacturers and carriers is to
bring wireless applications to the enterprise, with horizontal
offerings for industries such as financial services and
manufacturing.
"What we're going to do is go after those specific markets with
this ecosystem of partners... with specific solutions to help them
mobilise on the enterprise in ways that haven't been done yet," he
said. "What we're going to provide are some of the tools and
programs and a platform so [the applications] can get rapidly
deployed."
With this initiative, users will be able to use applications
with a $50 (£30) mobile phone instead of a $500 (£300) PDA, said
Dewar.
Ultimately the goal is convince developers that building
applications for mobile devices is no different to building them
for PCs.
Mark
Jones and Paul Krill write for InfoWorld