Following is brief information about mobile application sources. This information is provided to help you troubleshoot problems and advise developers. See the Unwired Accelerator Developer’s Guide for detailed information.
Enterprise applications – provide access to enterprise applications using client interfaces using different strategies. The strategy for SAP is to download and configure an API. See “Setting up a SAP connection”.
Another strategy uses the web service element and WSDL files to connect to enterprise applications. See Remedy tutorial in Mobile Application Development Tutorial for an example.
Web application – capture Web content and display it in an application. The captured content is updated dynamically as the source Web content changes. The Web element wizard guides you through creating a Web element and provides different capture strategies, which represent the different HTML objects that you can capture from Web pages.
Database – query a back-end database and display the results in an application, or create and update records. When you create a database element, you can either enter a JNDI resource name or a JDBC connection URL for the data source.
JNDI data source – use the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) to connect the application to the data source. The following default JNDI data source resources are typically included in Unwired Accelerator:
java:/com/env/jdbc/portaldb – connects to the portal database
java:/com/env/jdbc/sampledb – connects to the sample database
java:/com/env/jdbc/agdb – connects to the M-Business Anywhere database
java:/com/env/jdbc/msales – connects to the mobile sales demo database
java:/com/env/jdbc/mpharma – connects to the mobile pharmacy demo database
java:/com/env/jdbc/uaml – connects to the consolidated database used by MobilLink and SmartSync
In Mobile Web Studio, on the New Application Database Element Definition window, select the JNDI resource name from the drop-down list; for example, “portaldb” for portal database, or “sampledb” for the sample database. You can use these data sources, or add other data sources. See “Setting up a JNDI data source resource” for information about adding a new JNDI resource.
JDBC connection cache – connection information is defined when the application server is set up, and available to application developers building JDBC applications. A disadvantage is that connection changes, which must be made through the application server, may cause applications to break.
In general, connection cache definitions are safer and easier to use, but if a connection to a database is required that is not available through a connection cache, you may have to either use the full JDBC specification, or to create the necessary connection cache definition through the application server. See “Setting up a JDBC connection cache” for information about adding a new connection cache.
XML – capture an application that is XML-based rather than HTML-based. XML is used to describe data, while HTML is mainly used to display data. XML is a common tool for transmitting and manipulating data in Web development. This type of application is generally used by portal administrators who are familiar with XML to Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSLT) transformations.
Web services – provide access to software that is available over the Internet and uses a standardized XML messaging system to invoke the service and supply the response. Web services are a useful way to provide data to a variety of consumers; for example, traffic reports, stock quotes, and travel services. This section provides basic introductory material about Web services and describes how to implement Web services in your portal.
JSP/ASP applications – capture Java Server Pages (JSP) Web applications and display them in an application.
HTML – specify HTML code that you can arrange within an application with other element types.
Document – create applications into which you load an application document (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDF, and so on).
File – create applications that are based on files. The file must contain data arranged in a format that can be mapped to grid data.
Domino – create applications that capture data—such as workflow, contacts, e-mail, and so forth—in tabular format from the Domino Notes server. Users can access their e-mail, contacts, To-Do lists, meetings, and workflow applications through their mobile devices, and update and insert data to the Domino database from their mobile devices.
SAP – create applications that capture data in tabular format from the SAP server.
