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M-Business Tips and Tricks
Kirk Reistroffer
Sr. Software Eng., iAnywhere Solutions
Agenda
 M-Business Anywhere Overview
 Tips and Techniques
• Application Development
• Optimizing Server Settings
• Utilizing New features in M-Business Anywhere 6.0
 Questions
 Resources
Overview
 M-Business Anywhere allows you to use the
best of web technologies to build, deploy and
maintain dynamic and reliable mobile
applications.
Why Web Development?
Cost-effective
•Standards-based (HTML, JavaScript, XML)
•Most IT shops have plenty of web expertise
Cross-platform
•Browser worries about the device
•Developer can focus on the application
Easy data/application integration
•Multiple data sources can look like one
app
•Easy to provide common look-and-feel
Server-based user interface
Powerful
•Automatic application updates
•Personalized UI/application functionality
•From content publishing to fully
database-driven enterprise
applications
Doesn’t the Web Need a Network?
 Making the web work with or without a connection
 Cache web pages – http gives developer control
• Server cache – parse and compress pages
• Device cache – pages are always available
 Store and forward form posts
• Raw post/get data is stored on device between syncs
• Pending posts are posted in batch at beginning of sync
 Support Personalization
• User agent string lets server know it’s an M-Business browser
• http headers contain information about user, device profile, cookies
 Ensure security
• Full support for round trip SSL from device to web application
• Support authentication and single sign-on
M-Business Anywhere Architecture
• Platform for creating and deploying online/offline mobile
web applications.
Server – the workhorse
 Sync Server
–
–
–
–
–
All communication with devices – only sends changes
Fetch, parse, cache, compress content, applications
Post forms from device back to application
Compile JavaScript
Initial Layout
 Admin Server
– Configure Users and Groups
– Configure “Channels” and Applications
– Logging and Performance reporting
 Soap Server
– Allows integration/embedding from outside applications
– Full access to users, channels, groups, sync logs
A Smart Client
 On-Device Data
- Database and XML sync to device, local database on device
 On-Device Logic
- JavaScript and Document Object Model (DOM) to control
presentation and access to data
 On-Device Dynamic Presentation
- HTML 4.0.1, XHTML 1.0 and CSS 1.0 Style Attribute for
dynamic user interface
Defining a Channel
Caching provides Speed and Usability
Channels – the key to always-available web apps
•url
•Link depth
Application Development
 Personalization
 Customization
 Optimization
Personalization
• Mobile applications often serve a number of user groups and
applications
• Need a platform - the cost of building and maintaining many
point solutions is prohibitive
• Limited screen and resources require application to be
targeted to the user and the task at hand
• Authentication/identity
• Localization
• Eg. Salesforce.com allows every user to have different
schema, choice lists, even screens, all from the same
infrastructure.
• Eg. Building inspection – different forms each time they go to
a building. Forms can differ even from building to building
Customizing Your Application
• Client customization beyond JavaScript – AvantGo object
– Preferences
– Toolbar
– Hourglass
• Navigation tricks – hidden channels
• Branding the home page
• Launching with a custom icon
Branding the Home Page
 Home page is a special web page served by the server.
You can customize it or replace it with your own.
 To customize, modify
C:\MBusinessServer\tomcat\webapps\device\index.jsp.
 Alternately, replace the url in agreservedsub with one of
your own.
Branding the Home Page
 The home page is a special channel. You can replace it
with your own page.
Managing the Connection
avantgo.isOnline()
avantgo.connect()
avantgo.disconnect()
avantgo.sync()
If a connection is not available
when you make an online
form post, the form will be
placed in the queue.
Inside Forms
 M-Business Anywhere provides
several special JavaScript
methods for handling form posts
– submitNoResponse()
– submitWithResponse()
– SubmissionMgr
• IsMulti – If it is false, there is
only a single submission
• A form post is a channel – good
trick for bringing new content to
the cache wirelessly
• Programmatic form submission
allows you to construct multiscreen forms but generate a
single form post.
Three ways to data driven applications
Data Store
Pros
Cons
HTML Forms
•No programming required
•Good for flat files
•Hierarchical data
•No searching/sorting
•No ability to display new
records until after a sync
XML
•Easy deployment of tables –
need a Schema and a data feed
•Seemless schema changes
•List view widget
•Best for quick distribution of
read only data or quick ad-hoc
data stores on device
•Hierarchical data – flat file
•One way – have to send new
records and updates via form
posts
•Non-transactional
Ultralite/Mobilink
•Fully relational/transactional
•Mobilink provides extensive
control over sync
•More complicated
Optimizing Application Development
 Server-side cache to minimize network traffic between
Web content servers and mBusiness server.
 Client-side cache to minimize traffic and bandwidth
between mBusiness client and server.
 Client local interaction with UltraLite or XML application
data via JavaScript, HTML DOM and POD plug-ins.
Optimizing Layout and Rendering
 Initial Layout is done on the server
• If onLoad script changes DOM, client has to layout
• Left alone, page laods will be faster
 Page re-loads are slow compared to DOM manipulation
• Use display attribute to show and hide
– <div id=“detail” style=“display:none”>
– onClick=“detail.style.display=“block”
• Insert elements into the DOM
• Use inline style attributes
 Large DOM inserts can be slow – changes are fast
• Let the server initialize “placeholder” elements
• Dynamically change their content or attributes
Letting the Server do the Work
 Things to think about when working with Web
Application Servers
• Session management – Sessions are often short, with the
assumption that you are working online.
– Extend sessions for M-Business Anywhere Clients using
UserAgent or http headers to determine client
– Leverage new ability to send single sign-on information in
headers
• Navigation – many application servers use posts or
JavaScript to navigate from page to page. M-Business
Anywhere can only “crawl” anchors
Letting the Server do the Work
 Things to think about when working with Web Application Servers
• Navigation – many application servers use posts or JavaScript to
navigate from page to page. M-Business Anywhere can only “crawl”
anchors
<form action=“nextPage.html”>
My first page content
<input type=“submit” value=“next”>
</form>
<input type=“button”
onClick=“window.location=“nextPage.html”>
<a href=“nextPage.html”></a>
OR
<a href=“nextPage.html><img
scr=“nextbutton.gif”></a>
Optimizing Server Settings : Sync.Conf
 Performance tuning
SyncPref WebToGoMaxTextSize 256
(KB)
SyncPref MaxCacheSize 262144
(256KB)
SyncPref WebToGoMaxImageSize 1000 (KB)
SyncPref WebToGoDefaultOnlineRequestSize 100
SyncPref QuadCompressJS TRUE
SyncPref CacheInMemory TRUE
SyncPref MaxMemCacheSize 10
(MB)
SyncPref MaxMemCacheObjectSize 1024 (KB)
Optimizing Server Settings : Sync.Conf
 Binary Types
• default behavior
SyncPref WebToGoIgnoredExtensions
pdf,fdf,psd,au,z,xlc,fon,hlp,ico,jar,xls,xlt,xlw,mov,pic,ra,r
m,ram,pfm,avi,wav,bmp,rtf,doc,arc,taz,tgz,wri,zip,gz,tar,
ppt,mdb,class,subs,ps,xbm,conf,default,xml,xsd
SyncPref WinCEDownloadTypes "mime-type1, ..., typeN“
SyncPref WinCEDownloadExts "ext1, ..., extN“
Binary Download Server Settings : Sync.Conf
Where to put an executable in the Win32/WinCE file system?
*.exe gets sent to the start menu: %AG_STARTMENU%
*.cab files get sent to \\Program Files\AvantGo\pods and then
executed
all others allowed by SyncPref WinCEDownloadTypes are sent to
\\Program Files\AvantGo\pods
 META tag capability
<meta name="x-avantgo-download-location“
content="filename.xxx,%AG_STARTMENU%">
<a href="filename.xxx></a>
 Launching/POD
shellExecute filename.xxx
Optimizing Server Settings : Sync.Conf
 Security
(inbound)
(outbound)
Client  SSL  Sync Server  SSL  Web Server
#SSL:#ECC:Sagd_CertFileName /…/sslecdsa.crt
#SSL:#ECC:Sagd_KeyPassword password
#SSL:SyncPref AllowSecureClientConnect TRUE
#SSL:SyncPref ConnectSecureOnly FALSE
#SSL:SyncPref AllowHTTPSAlways FALSE
Optimizing Server Settings : Sync.Conf
 Logging and Debugging settings
ErrorLog logs/sync_error.log
emergency: Problems preventing correct operation of the server.
alert: Problems preventing correct operation of a component.
critical: Problems which degrade operation of a component.
error: Problems which are transient or affect only specific users.
warning: Problems that may be an issue if they occur frequently.
LogLevel warning
SyncPref EnableLog webtogo,astro
SyncPref EnableLog rover0,…,rover3
SyncPref EnableLog cache,memcache
SyncPref EnableLog timed_action,webtogo_binary
Utilizing new features in M-Business Anywhere 6.0
 Make it easier for companies to embed and integrate M-Business
Anywhere into their applications
• SOAP Server
• Easier client management
• More control over the sync process
 Increase Performance and Security
• Improved caching
• Password protect the client
• Support single sign-on integration
 Support more content
• DBCS Support
• Localized Chinese and Japanese
Embedding and Integration Features
 SOAP API
• Developers can now do programmatically virtually anything they
could do thru Admin UI via WSDL-based Web Service
• Allows an external system to populate M-Business meta data
• Allows complete access to logging and server statistics for
reporting and monitoring
• Java and .NET client examples are provided
 Admin UI
• Moved to Tomcat
• A new "tree-based" paradigm will make it easier to extend the UI.
• Implemented using the new SOAP API
SOAP .NET Example
using System;
using console.SoapRef;
using System.Xml;
namespace console
{
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public class TestAPI

{
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SoapRef.avantgoapi m_api;
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uint m_groupUserId;
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uint m_groupId;
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NewUser nu = new NewUser();
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nu.userName = “newuser;
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nu.firstName = “New";
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nu.lastName = "User";
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nu.password = “xxxx";
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nu.comment = “Test";
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m_groupUserId = m_api.userCreate(nu);
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}
}
Improved Client Management
 Client Remote Upgrade
• Automatic upgrade of M-Business client to user devices
• Rules by platform, group
Support for More Content
 DBCS support
• Internationalization to support double-byte characters. Includes
ability to display dbcs html and run the server, client and desktop
components on dbcs OS machines. Supported device platforms
are XP, Windows CE 2003 and Windows Mobile 2005.
 Localization
• Localized version of the M-Business client into Japanese,
Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese for XP, Windows CE
2003 and Windows Mobile 2005.
Windows Mobile 5.0
 What’s new with Windows Mobile 2005
 Client signing
 ActiveSync 4.x /Windows Mobile 2005
What’s coming in 6.2 Release
 Microsoft Smartphone Client
•
•
•
•
PPC 2003 and above
Full Enterprise Client support as well as AMI consumer client
Softkey Menu
Improved stylus free operation
 VGA Resolution
• Greatly improved text readability
• Higher quality images
 SD Card support
• Client and content on PPC and Microsoft Smartphone
• Content only on Palm
Questions
?
Resources
 http://www.ianywhere.com/developer/mbusiness_anywhere.html
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Developer Getting Started Guide
Developer Guide
Developer Reference
White Papers
Sample Code
 news://forums.sybase.com/ public.ianywhere.mbusinessanywhere.general
Understanding the Device Cache
 URL is the unique ID
– Any channel can link to a page in another channel
 M-Business Anywhere can serve any mime type
– Easy way to get documents and media files from your web site to
mobile devices
– Viewer applications can be launched from JavaScript
 Serve a directory
– Putting new files in the directory adds them to the device
– Use JavaScript to navigate once the page is in the cache
 Hidden anchors
– <a href=“foo.html”></a>
– Page is still fetched and cached
– Same technique works with hidden channels
Personalization – HTTP Headers
 GET / HTTP/1.0
 Host: localhost:8080
 Accept: text/plain, text/html, image/jpeg, image/gif, application/octet-stream, application/x-javascript,
text/javascript, text/xml
 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; AvantGo 6.0; Windows NT)
 X-AvantGo-DeviceProcessor: 0x0100
 Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDAACRSCDQ=ALFJPJLAPENBJJIABPOPBEIB
 X-AvantGo-Version: 6.0.154

6.0.154
 X-AvantGo-ColorDepth: MTY=

16
 X-AvantGo-ClientLanguage: en_US

en_US
 X-AvantGo-Browser: AvantGo

AvantGo
 X-AvantGo-ScreenSize: MzIweDMyMA==

320x320
 X-AvantGo-DeviceOS: UEFMTV9PUw==

PALM_OS
 X-AvantGo-DeviceOSVersion: NS4xLjA=

5.1.0
 X-AvantGo-UserId: Y2dyaW1wYWxt

cgrimpalm
 X-AvantGo-UserPassword: ZGVtbw==

demo
 X-AvantGo-DeviceId: U0VSSUFMTlVNQkVS
 X-AvantGo-OnlineRequest: TRUE
 X-AvantGo-CradleSync: FALSE
 X-AvantGo-ChannelId: 0
 X-AvantGo-PlatformData: 0x0100
Personalization - Authentication
 Challenge – Response
• Web server returns challenge, user is
prompted and must sync again
 Use cookies to store tokens
• Custom authentication logic
• Single sign-on, etc.
Personalization – Use the URL
 Channel macros – replaced at sync time
• AG_USER
• AG_DEVICEOS
• Example: http://myserver/form.html?id=AG_USER =>
http://myserver/form.html?id=cgrim
Meta tags
 <META NAME="HandheldFriendly“ CONTENT="True">
 <META HTTP-EQUIV=pragma CONTENT=“no-cache”>
 <META HTTP-EQUIV=content-type
CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
 <META HTTP-EQUIV=content-type
CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
 <META HTTP-EQUIV=content-type
CONTENT="text/html; charset=Shift-JIS">
AvantGo Object
 Preferences
• Persistent key-value store
• Applications specific user prefs
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
getStringValueForKey()
setStringValueForKey()
getInt32ValueForKey()
setInt32ValueForKey()
getUInt32ValueForKey()
setUInt32ValueForKey()
getBoolValueForKey()
setBoolValueForKey()
getBytesForKey()
setBytesForKey()
Toolbar Object
 buttonCount
 createButton()
 deleteButton()
 title
 buttonForIndex()
 buttonForName()
Showing an hourglass
 window.showBusy = bool;
 Call it before any activity
that will take time.
Custom Launcher
SOAP Java Example
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package com.ia.mbwebapi.tests;
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import
import
import
import
import
import
import
import
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public class TestUserApi
{
private static SoapHttpClient lshc;
private static int userId;
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java.util.*;
java.io.*;
java.net.*;
de.fmui.spheon.jsoap.*;
de.fmui.spheon.jsoap.transport.http.*;
de.fmui.spheon.jsoap.encoding.*;
com.ia.mbwebapi.tests.Util;
com.ia.mbwebapi.structs.*;
public static boolean TestApi(String server, SoapConfig sc, SoapHttpClient shc, String sid) throws Exception
{
RPCCall call = new RPCCall( sc, "urn:AvantgoWebAPI", "userCreate" );
NewUser n = new NewUser();
n.userName = "UnitTestUser" + System.currentTimeMillis();
n.firstName = "UnitTest";
n.lastName = "User";
n.password = "u";
n.comment = "comment";
call.setParameter( "user", n, NewUser.class);
Util.InsertSessionId(call.getEnvelope(), sid );
Envelope answer = shc.invokeHTTP(new URL( server ), "", call.getEnvelope());
ParamBag b = call.getResults( answer );
Integer id = (Integer) b.getValue( 0 );
p( "Success: userCreate returned user id:" + id);
userId = id.intValue();
}
}
}