Chapter 14. Oracle Application Server Wireless

As Oracle Application Server has evolved, new components have extended the standard capabilities of an application server to handle new areas of technology. One area of explosive technology growth today is the deployment of wireless-enabled applications. This growth has been aided by an increase in the sophistication of wireless devices, including cell phones and Internet-attachable PDA devices, and the growing availability of public wireless connection sites. Usage of such applications and infrastructure is now becoming commonplace. Oracle Application Server Wireless provides a platform that enables the deployment of mobile applications.

Of course, the value of OracleAS Wireless applications is that information can be made available to, and can be updated by, remote users. Advanced OracleAS Wireless features can enable targeted data delivery based on device location. For example, you may want to provide a guide of local movies available in a particular area based on the current physical location of a person's cell phone.

The OracleAS Wireless features in Oracle Application Server enable the deployment of a variety of mobile applications, including:

• Browser-based applications

• Voice applications

• Applications written using Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME)

• Two-way messaging applications using asynchronous services (ASK), alerts, and notifications

Mobile applications can function entirely disconnected, occasionally connected, or fully connected, depending on the application.

OracleAS Wireless provides components in three areas:

Foundation services

These services are required in the development and deployment of wireless applications. Foundation services include location-based services, alerts, content syndication, provisioning, personalization, synchronization, analytics (providing mobile usage reports ), and commerce utilities.

Development tools and sample wireless applications

Applications are built using a variety of supported languages and the OracleAS Wireless Development Kit (WDK).

Support of multiple protocols

These protocols enable access to wireless applications from a variety of devices. For example, OracleAS Wireless provides the underlying infrastructure for mobile deployment of Oracle's Collaboration Suite and E-Business Suite applications.

Deployed applications are accessed using a variety of delivery methods via the Multi-Channel Server (see Figure 14-1), which is described in detail in Section 14.3 later in this chapter.

Figure 14-1. OracleAS Wireless Multi-Channel Server deployment

This chapter describes the OracleAS Wireless Foundation Services and the OracleAS Wireless application development tools, deployment process, and administration tools.