Substance of Code

Bill Colwill from company called apps for phones informed me kindly about the new release of their commercial rapid application development (RAD) tool, apps for phones. The version 2 has two interesting new features compared to previous release: JSR-120 implementation for sending and receiving SMS messages and support for apps for phones Basic language.

The SMS support brings great possibilities for mobile applications. It allows easy system integration and communication between two phones. It allows for example to use existing SMS gateway systems as an integration tool for between company’s internal system and mobile applications. SMS gateway systems also usually include functional invoicing framework so it can also be used as a great alternative for billing your mobile application users (eg. monthly fee). SMS messages could also be used to create a multiplayer games that would communicate game statuses and turns via SMS.

The apps for phones Basic language support points out how different approach the apps for phones team have taken. They have really thought out of the box as they have succesfully implemented a basic language to “Java” application development tool. The basic language’s syntax seems to be quite identical to Microsoft Visual Basic so it is very easy to write and many developers already are very familiar with the language so this reduces the development time for people that aren’t familiar with Java and J2ME.

Last time I evaluated the apps for phones I didn’t have enough time to try developing some more complex systems with it. This time I tested the tool by creating a client application for my Remote TV Recording Service. With this system the user can start recording a TV channel whenever and where ever they are. I have had at least dozen of times when I haven’t been near the TV and I remember that my favourite show or important program is just starting. This application is aimed to these situations. The Remote TV Recording Service operates as an interface between a mobile client application and server’s Digital Video Recorder (DVR) software. I implemented this service by creating a simple Web Service with a single operation called startRecording(int channel, int minutes).

I was quite amazed by apps for phones functionality because when I implemented this service into a mobile application using apps for phone I didn’t have to write a single line of code (see the screenshot). Every action could be configured mostly with mouse clicks via the integrated development interface (IDE). The Web Service wizard was especially handy and easy to use. I bet that writing this kind of midlet using plain Java would take atleast few more days coding. And if development is thought on higher level then there would be more unit and system testing and maintaining involved in this project compared to application developed with RAD tool.

As a final words I may say that apps for phones have made their great tool even better. There most certainly are places where this tool should be used instead of “traditional” coding. One should consider about the savings that this tool will bring by cutting down the development time.

But don’t take my word for it, try it out yourself by downloading the evalutation version of the apps for phone RAD tool.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2005 at 20:42 and is filed under Link, Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.