Developing Software for Wireless Devices

Developing Software for Wireless
Devices

Robert Hatch

Sean Meredith

James Pate Williams, Jr.

Overview

•
Sun Java SDK 1.3

•
Forte

•
Sun Java Micro Edition

•
Packages of MIDP

Desirable Software Components

•
Sun Java 1.3.1+ Software Development Kit

•
Sun Forte 3.0 Integrated Development
Environment

•
Sun Java 2 Micro Edition Wireless Toolkit

•
All are freely downloadable from Sun and
require at least a 450 MHz Pentium II with
128 MB of RAM

Sun Java 2 SDK 1.3

•
Improvements

–
more robust than previous Java SDKs

–
sound API that includes a MIDI synthesizer and
sequencer

–
support for the Java 2 Micro Edition Wireless
Toolkit

Sun Forte 3.0

•
Integrated Development Environment for
Java programming

•
comparable to Borland’s JBuilder 5.0

•
constructed using Java

•
a resource hog

Sun Java2 ME Wireless Toolkit

•
Version 1.0.3 can be used either in
integrated mode with Forte 3.0 or as a stand
alone product.

•
The integrated version is easier for code
development and testing

•
The Wireless Toolkit implements a Mobile
Information Device Profile (MIDP) for
some common wireless devices

Wireless Toolkit

•
The toolkit includes the following
emulators:

–
default grey phone

–
minimum phone

–
Motorola i85s

–
Palm OS device

–
RIM Java handheld

Wireless Toolkit

•
The emulators can function fairly closely to
read devices in terms of the GUIs that they
offer.

Java Mobile Information Device
Profile (MIDP)

•
Consists of five packages:

–
user interface package

–
persistence package

–
application lifecycle package

–
networking package

–
core packages

User Interface Package

•
Listener interfaces

–
ChoiceAPI

–
CommandListener

–
ItemStateListener

•
Buttons

–
defined as commands

–
actions can be captured by implementing the
CommandListener interface, e.g. by defining
the commandAction method

User Interface Package:
Common GUI Elements

•
Alert

•
Canvas

•
Command

•
ChoiceGroup

•
DateField

•
Display

•
Font

•
Form

•
Gauge

•
Graphics

•
Image

•
Item

•
List

•
Screen

•
Ticker

Persistence Package

•
Components

–
RecordComparator

–
RecordEnumeration

–
RecordFilter

–
RecordListener

•
Associated class

–
RecordStore
-

a class representing a record
store

Application Lifecycle Package

•
Defines Mobile Information Device Profile
applications and interactions between the
application and the environment in which
the application runs

•
Class associated

–
MIDlet
-

MIDP application on the device

•
States

–
Paused

–
Active

–
Destroyed

MIDlet Life Cycle

Networking Package

•
Components

–
Connection

–
ContentConnection

–
Datagram

–
DatagramConnection

–
HttpConnection

–
InputConnection

Networking Package

•
Components

–
OutputConnection

–
StreamConnection

–
StreamConnectionNotifier

•
Associated class

–
Connector
-

placeholder for the static methods
that are used for creating all the Connection
jobs.


Networking Package

•
Support for stream connections (TCP/IP)
and datagram connections (UDP/IP)

–
TCP/IP
-

connection
-
oriented protocol; reliable
and in
-
order delivery of packets

–
UDP/IP
-

connectionless
-
oriented protocol;
unreliable and possibly out
-
of
-
order delivery of
packets

Networking Package (Cont.)

•
Some wireless devices such as Palm OS
devices do not offer the datagram protocol
and only use stream connections

•
Java MIDP supports HTTP connections

•
TCP/IP networking is fairly straightforward
and only requires a few lines of code to
implement

Core Packages

•
java.io

•
java.lang

•
java.util

Wireless Device Software
Development Steps

•
Create a MIDlet suite template using Forte 3.0

•
Fill in the MIDlet details to incorporate desired
functionality

•
Execute code on various emulators; the same
code behaves differently on distinct platforms

•
Port code to desired device

•
Test on an actual wireless device

Demo