Towards a JavaTM-Based Enterprise Client for Small Devices

The goal of the work reported here was to explore the use of the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2METM) platform for applications connected to the enterprise, specifically focusing on Palm-based wireless applications. We found that the JavaTM platform on the Palm is still maturing. The Palm itself has been carefully engineered to support small native applications, with a distinctive graphical user interface tuned for its display. Work remains to be done on the Palm to support more complex wireless applications and to make Java-based applications competitive. We also found that wireless enterprise applications in general are somewhat problematic, due to issues of network reliability, availability, bandwidth, and provisioning. Significantly, programming languages and their platforms are not the gating factors to large scale wireless deployment. This work was performed in 2000 and 2001, before the current commercial deployment of Java-enabled mobile devices and faster wide-area wireless data services (such as GPRS). We hope to repeat our experiments using these technologies. email addresses: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] © 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. The SML Technical Report Series is published by Sun Microsystems Laboratories, of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Printed in U.S.A. Unlimited copying without fee is permitted provided that the copies are not made nor distributed for direct commercial advantage, and credit to the source is given. Otherwise, no part of this work covered by copyright hereon may be reproduced in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or storage in an information retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. TRADEMARKS Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Java, J2ME, J2SE, PersonalJava, JDK, Java Card, Java Virtual Machine, JavaMail, Kjava, iPlanet, Solaris, Java Community Process, and Sun ONE are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. For information regarding the SML Technical Report Series, contact Jeanie Treichel, Editor-in-Chief . All technical reports are available online on our Website, http://research.sun.com/techrep/.