Professional Java Mobile Programming

This book's principal strength is probably its complete coverage of mobile Java's possibilities. From tiny smart cards to Java-aware phones to pagers and even full-fledged PDAs, the authors cover the dizzying array of acronyms involved in the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). The actual source code here concentrates on two flavors (called profiles) of J2ME: the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP), for PDAs, and the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC), for pagers. To this end, this text covers both high-level controls available on the MIDP platform, and then lower-level graphical calls. They provide a case study for a contact manager then port it to the more restricted form factor of the CLDC standard.

Coverage of smart card programming will help get you started there. Smart cards have just a few bytes of memory, so programming them requires a very different mindset, and this text shows you how to work with these devices. Coverage of additional abilities in mobile Java from the Java Message Service (JMS) and telephony APIs rounds out the text. The authors anchor their sometimes wide-ranging discussion with some larger case studies, including a Towers of Hanoi simulation and a mobile application that uses global positioning information.

Later samples integrate mobile applications into the larger J2EE platform on the server-side. The code here mixes in technologies like servlets, EJBs, XML, and XSLT with mobile user interfaces. A discussion of the software design process geared toward mobile development closes out this book. Useful reference sections compare the MIDP and CLDC APIs, as well as listing all available classes and methods in each.

Though this text at times adopts a somewhat scattershot approach in its organization, its overall coverage of the rich possibilities of today's different mobile Java standards will help make it a useful resource for understanding what Java has to offer when it comes to mobile computing. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Introduction to the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), current J2ME implementations: the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and the K Virtual Machine (KVM), the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP), the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) profile; overview of mobile and wireless networking standards (including Bluetooth and 802.11), designing J2ME software (including architecture and use cases), CDC and the Foundation Profile (supported classes), programming with sockets and POP3 in CDC (basic e-mail), comparison of various J2ME profiles, high-level APIs for controls in CLDC, low-level graphics APIs for CLDC apps, the MIDP record management system, networking, using timers, downloading images, a sample case study for a contact database mobile application in MIDP (and a CDC/CLDC version), synchronization between mobile devices and desktops (a custom protocol and SyncML), the JavaPhone API (architecture and programming concepts), writing smart card applications (including the Java Card Development Kit), integrating mobile devices and J2EE servlet Web applications (downloading a file via a servlet), asynchronous message and the Java Message Service (JMS), case studies for a mobile version of the Towers of Hanoi problem, an expert system and mobile positioning; security issues for mobile devices and systems, overview of the software design process for mobile devices, reference with a comparison of mobile device APIs, and API listing for CLDC and MIDP classes and methods.