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Extending the Enterprise
Building a bridge from the back end to the mobile user,
end-to-end Java enables the anywhere, anytime enterprise
by Peter Varhol
Posted July 25, 2002
As the reach of information in the enterprise extends past the desktop computer and onto devices such as point-of-sale terminals, handheld PDAs, and cellular telephones, enterprises are asking if Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) is an integral part of the plan. Does J2ME have the capabilities needed to enable personal devices to fully participate in the enterprise? Or is it just a "toy" that targets simple applications designed for PDAs and consumer electronics devices?
The question is more than academic. Enterprises increasingly need information collected from, and delivered to, unconventional places.
An executive calling up realtime sales or production data on a PDA at an analyst meeting is only the beginning. Inventory tracking, vehicle routing, weather forecasting, and process control are just a few of the areas that involve reaching out past the physical confines of the enterprise.
And competition from the Microsoft camp is heating up. While the Java community has spent the last several years working on enterprise solutions, Microsoft has been moving up from the desktop. Today, with the Microsoft .Net architecture and Windows CE, Microsoft arguably has a consistent end-to-end solution from the database to the handheld. Whether this solution is scalable and production-ready is debatable, but the vision is on target.
J2ME is more than just a toy (sorry, Microsoft). Standards for connectivity to the edges of the enterprise are emerging (see Figure 1). Java has been proven in practice on small footprint devices, and new capabilities for wireless and disconnected operation will make the concept more reliable. Furthermore, Java has the distinct advantage of being inherently multiplatform.
What is still lacking, however, is end-to-end consistency in the model, the development environment, and in the connectivity to Web services and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) servers. It will take time for standards to solidify, and in the meantime developers are struggling to pull together the pieces into a coherent whole. Vendors are starting to support J2ME, but developers still have to wade through holes and develop workarounds. Existing end-to-end solutions are either still under construction or require the use of technology whose standards aren't yet settled.
This means that enterprises have a choice to make. The large and diverse Java vendor community has developed solutions that get enterprise developers part of the way to the edge. But more complete solutions may require proprietary extensions or custom approaches.
Java on the Device
The desire for a version of Java that could more effectively deal with constrained resources was originally driven by the requirements of the embedded system community, which latched onto Java as a way to more easily develop small-footprint applications that enabled communications on electronic devices. This covered not only consumer devices, but also a wide range of hardware, such as routers and switches, data collection instruments, and diagnostic tools. For the most part, these were standalone devices, with limited need for connectivity.
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