Sun Enterprise Mobility Blog

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We have a number of activities showcasing  the GlassFish Mobility Platform at JavaOne 2009   from June 2- 5 , 2009.

Hans Hrasna and Satish Hemachandran from Sun will present a technical session  TS-4877 titled "Sun GlassFish™ Mobility Platform" on Wed, June 3.

Hans Hrasna (along with Rebecca Searls)  will also be presenting  a course " Developing and Deploying Mobile Enterprise Solutions Using Sun Glassfish Mobility Platform (SGMP)"  at  the  Java University  on Sunday, May 31st.

Finally, we have a pod for the Mobility Platform in the JavaOne Pavilion where you can see demos of the Mobility Platform in action and get to know more about the Mobility Platform.

So, if you are going to be at JavaOne 2009, we invite you to attend all these activities and engage with our team to understand how the Mobility Platform can help your company mobilize your enterprise applications.

In his  blog, Rajiv Konkimalla from ITDistributors, a Sun Partner, describes  how he developed a mobility solution using the GlassFish Mobility Platform to synchronizes data between a mobile device and Twitter. He connected to the Twitter service by building  a RESTful Web Services based connector that synchronizes information between Twitter and a mobile device.

Joe Wang describes how he developed a mobile client application using the Mobility Platform APIs and the LWUIT UI librarry  in his blog. This application allows a mobile user to retrieve data from a Salesforce.com account.

We have developed a number of demo applications to showcase the various use cases of the Mobility Platform. In this blog/screencast, Ryan provides a walkthrough of a Case Management mobility solution that uses the GlassFish Mobility Platform v1.1 and connects to a Remedy Action Request System (ARS) from BMC.  Please contact us if you would like to get more info regarding this.

The Sun GlassFish Mobility Platform has a provisioning server that enables users to do over the air provisioning ( OTA) of the Mobility Platform clients on to mobile devices. Hans describes how to provision clients on to Blackberry phones using GlassFish Mobility Platform v1.1.

In this blog/webcast, Ryan describes how the Salesforce mobile client  that was developed by a partner for the GlassFish Mobility Platform works. As Ryan mentions in his blog, this client works in concert with the Salesforce connector that was described by Rebecca in her blogs.

 There is a Salesforce sample app - along with the sources - similar to the one described by Ryan available in the client bundle of in the Mobility Platform 1.1 release. We encourage you to try it out and contact us if you have any questions or want to get more details.

Santiago Pericas-Geertsen describes  how to develop JAX-RS connectors  and deploy JAX-RS connectors in the GlassFish Mobility Platform 1.1.

Rebecca Searls describes how to use a JAX-RS connector to mobilize a web service in the following 3 blogs

http://blogs.sun.com/searls/entry/mobilizing_a_webservice_using_jax

http://blogs.sun.com/searls/entry/mobilizing_a_web_service_using

http://blogs.sun.com/searls/entry/mobilizing_a_web_service_using1

Ryan Shoemaker introduces Sun GlassFish Mobility Platform 1.1: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/ryan_shoemaker/archive/2009/02/introducing_sun.html

Ryan Shoemaker describes the security features of Sun GlassFish Mobility Platform 1.1:
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/ryan_shoemaker/archive/2009/02/developing_mep.html

We are happy to announce the general availability of Sun GlassFish™ Mobility Platform 1.1. This is an update release to the Mobile Enterprise Platform 1.0 release and contains a number of new features and many improvements.

Sun GlassFish Mobility Platform is a horizontal mobility platform based on open industry standards and enterprise Java technologies that enables mobile devices to access information systems and content. Sun GlassFish Mobility Platform integrates advanced synchronization capabilities and handles dynamic data with flexibility, security, and ease of maintenance on a single platform.

Highlights

• Provides end-to-end security from the mobile device to the back-end server
• Enables real-time data synchronization, dynamic data updates, and offline data access
• Simplifies design and development efforts by being device and service-provider agnostic
• Reduces development costs and time to market by providing outof-the-box connectivity to many enterprise systems
• Reduces support costs by providing over-the-air provisioning capabilities
• Is based on open industry standards and proven enterprise Java technologies

Standard use cases for GlassFish Mobility Platform include field service, logistics, and sales force automation, allowing the mobile workforce to connect easily and securely to many enterprise applications. GlassFish Mobility Platform can operate in an Occasionally Connected Computing (OCC) environment, using client caching to allow mobile workers to access and update their data, even when they are off the network.

Key features of GlassFish Mobility Platform 1.1

• Out-of-the-box connectivity to many enterprise application platforms
• Support for a wide variety of mobile devices
• Offline access to data when there is no network coverage
• Encryption and data fading/wiping, which extend enterprise application security to mobile devices
• Support for over-the-air provisioning of mobile clients
• Tools and templates that simplify the development and customization of mobile applications

Architecture Diagram of Sun GlassFish Mobility Platform 1.1 components

New features of GlassFish Mobility Platform 1.1

• Support for JAX-RS based connectors
• JerseyME: JAX-RS client library for CLDC
• Support for Dynamic parameters
• Blackberry/Palm WM6 OTA client provisioning
• Improved GlassFish cluster support and logging
• Maven Archetypes for ease of development
• 508 compliant
• Salesforce Sample
  

We invite you to download the Sun GlassFish Mobility Platform for a free evaluation at  http://www.sun.com/software/products/mep/get.jsp. You can also sign up for a Proof-of-Concept (POC), or subscribe to a full service plan, where  Sun and our partners will provide the expertise to deploy GlassFish Mobility Platform in your production environment.

For additional information, go to the GlassFish Mobility Platform product page and the GlassFish Mobility Platform documentation.

Stay tuned for more blogs from the Sun GlassFish Mobility Platform team, with a deep-dive into GlassFish Mobility Platform features, configuration, and use cases as well as benefits to the customer, in the coming days and weeks.

Santiago Pericas-Geertsen has updated his blog with two more entries on developing MEP connectors: one on implementing the BusinessObjectProvider class and one on using NetBeans 6.1 and Maven for MEP development.

We're making good progress with MEP and garnering much interest from customers. We have an opening in our group to work on MEP client development and tooling, and we would like to invite qualified candidates to apply for this position. For details on the job opening, go to http://www.sun.com/corp_emp/search.cgi?req=560860.

We hope to hear from many of you soon.

Ryan Shoemaker of the MEP development team provides more detail on developing MEP client applications.

Santiago Pericas-Geertsen, who created the Enterprise Connector Business Objects (ECBO) API, provides an introduction to MEP Enterprise Connector development in two parts: Part One and Part Two.

Ryan Shoemaker, who created the Mobile Client Business Object (MCBO) API, provides a short introduction to developing mobile client applications for MEP.

Tom Amiro of the MEP QA team offers some great MEP installation tips on his blog, supplementing the instructions in the MEP Installation Guide.

If your EIS/EAI system is SAP ERP, Art Frechette, also of the MEP QA team, provides essential instructions on how to configure MEP to access SAP.

For an engineering view of Sun Java System Mobile Enterprise Platform (MEP), here are two blog entries from members of the MEP team: Santiago Pericas-Geertsen's blog provides a brief intro to MEP architecture and deployment, and Ryan Shoemaker's blog provides an insight into the MEP client architecture.

Ryan and Santiago helped introduce MEP to the world at JavaOne 2008 in May. Ryan's posted the JavaOne slides on his blog.

For more information about MEP, visit the product website.

We invite you to download MEP for a free evaluation at http://www.sun.com/software/products/mep/get.jsp.

Sun Java System Mobile Enterprise Platform (MEP) is an end-to-end mobility solution that consists of multiple components, and it can be deployed in several different configurations. This article provides details on MEP deployment and on MEP architecture.

MEP Deployment Scenarios

MEP can be deployed in two different ways, in a mobile provider managed scenario and in an enterprise managed scenario.

Mobile Provider Managed Deployment Scenario

In a mobile provider managed scenario, such as the one shown in Figure 1-1, the Gateway engine and its associated sync database form the Gateway tier in the carrier's network. The corporate network includes the MEP Enterprise tier components and the EIS/EAI system.

Figure 1–1 Mobile Provider Managed Deployment

Enterprise Managed Deployment Scenario

In an enterprise managed scenario, such as the one shown in Figure 1-2, all of the MEP components and the database or EIS/EAI system are in the corporate network.

Figure 1–2 Enterprise Managed Deployment

MEP Architecture

MEP supports synchronization of enterprise data between Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization (OMA DS) enabled mobile phones and a database or EIS/EAI system.

The MEP architecture is based entirely on open industry standards and is designed to operate a highly scalable, fault-tolerant environment tightly integrated with the existing infrastructure. MEP includes support for automatic failover and load-balancing, providing near-linear scalability. This architecture has been proven in carrier-grade deployments.

See the Sun Java System Mobile Enterprise Platform 1.0 Architectural Overview for more information about  the architecture and features of MEP.

The major highlights of the MEP architecture are as follows.

Mobile Client Business Object API

The Mobile Client Business Object (MCBO) API provides an easy-to-use programming interface. It is provided as a Java ME library that the client application developer can use to develop a MEP Client application.

See Sun Java System Mobile Enterprise Platform 1.0 Developer’s Guide for Client Applications for information about using the MCBO API.

MEP Gateway

The MEP Gateway is the server component that interprets the incoming OMA DS messages and translates them into commands and data for Enterprise Connectors. The interface between the Gateway and the Enterprise Connectors is the Java Content Repository API.

Sync Database

The sync database contains the tables required by the MEP Gateway to store synchronization timestamps for client devices, mappings between client and server items, user information, configuration information, and synchronization message digest data.

Enterprise Connector Business Object API

The Enterprise Connector Business Object (ECBO) API provides an easy-to-use programming interface that makes it easy to build Enterprise Connectors.

See Sun Java System Mobile Enterprise Platform 1.0 Developer’s Guide for Enterprise Connectors for information about using the ECBO API.

Sun JCA Adapters

Sun JCA Adapters are Java EE Connector Architecture-based resource adapters that read and write data in the native format of specific databases or EIS/EAI systems. MEP includes adapters for SAP ERP, Siebel EAI, JDBC, and Oracle.

Figure 1-3 Two-Tier MEP Architecture

The figure above shows a two-tier architecture, consisting of a Gateway tier and an Enterprise tier. The Gateway tier includes the Gateway Engine and Web Service connector. The Enterprise tier includes the Web Service endpoint and Enterprise Connector, as well as the Sun JCA Adapter that communicates with the EIS/EAI system. The Web Service connector in the Gateway tier uses SOAP over HTTPS (or HTTP) to communicate with the Web Service endpoint in the Enterprise tier. The Enterprise Connector uses the ECBO APIs to communicate with the Connector Library and the JCA APIs to communicate with the Sun JCA adapter which, in turn, communicates with the EIS/EAI system.

The Gateway and Enterprise Tier are combined into a single tier in the case of the enterprise managed deployment. 

Download MEP Now

We invite you to download MEP for a free evaluation at http://www.sun.com/software/products/mep/get.jsp. 
You can also sign up for a Proof-of-Concept (POC), or subscribe to a full service plan, where Sun and our partners will provide the expertise to deploy MEP in your production environment.

Today’s workforce requires real-time remote access to corporate data. For example, field service technicians must update their work tickets as soon as they complete a task so that the company’s scheduling software can efficiently allocate resources. Field sales agents need to update customer accounts as they go from one customer site to another. The challenges in addressing these use cases revolved around

• Multiple devices and platforms that needed to be supported
• Potential security issues in having corporate data on unprotected mobile devices
• Proprietary and expensive solutions that could not meet enterprise SLAs
• Lack of a true enterprise platform that could support the availability and scaling needs of such use cases

To fulfill the needs of the mobile workforce, we are happy to announce the general availability of Sun Java System Mobile Enterprise Platform (MEP) 1.0.  MEP enables mobile access for a range of off-the-shelf and home-grown enterprise applications for a variety of mobile devices. At the  core of MEP is an open standards-based platform consisting of Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server, MySQL and Java ME to provide reliable two-way data synchronization with security, device management, and offline access.

Standard use cases for MEP include field service, logistics, and sales force automation, allowing the mobile workforce to connect easily and securely to many enterprise applications. MEP can operate in an Occasionally Connected Computing (OCC) environment, using client caching to allow mobile workers to access and update their data, even when they are off the network.

Key features of MEP

■ Out-of-the-box connectivity to many enterprise application platforms
■ Support for a wide variety of mobile devices
■ Offline access to data when there is no network coverage
■ Encryption and data fading/wiping, which extend enterprise application security to mobile devices
■ Support for over-the-air provisioning of mobile clients
■ Tools and templates that simplify the development and customization of mobile applications
■ Based on open industry standards and robust and scalable Java technologies

We invite you to download MEP for a free evaluation at http://www.sun.com/software/products/mep/get.jsp. 
You can also sign up for a Proof-of-Concept (POC), or subscribe to a full service plan, where Sun and our partners will provide the expertise to deploy MEP in your production environment.

For additional information, go to the MEP product page and the MEP documentation.

Stay tuned for more blogs from the Sun MEP team, with a deep-dive into MEP features, configuration, and use cases as well as benefits to the customer, in the coming days and weeks.