The future world of pervasive computing demands powerful and flexible development platforms. Is Java up to the task? Can Java provide end-to-end solutions for wireless Web services networks? In this article, the debut of JavaWorld's Wireless Java column, Michael Juntao Yuan and Ju Long discuss the definition, importance, and architecture of wireless Web services. They show how Java's advantages extend to wireless Web services applications and present core Java technologies for supporting such applications. Those technologies include advanced XML processing, voice-based user interfaces, security, and high performance VMs. (4,200 words; June 21, 2002)
The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) has become the most important data exchange protocol for XML Web services. All Web services applications must support SOAP. In this article, Michael Juntao Yuan introduces an essential tool to support Web services on small wireless devices-the kSOAP parser. As he illustrates through examples, kSOAP is a powerful tool for composing and extracting Java data objects to and from SOAP messages. kSOAP is also flexible and lets users add custom functionalities through its own APIs or by directly modifying the source code. (4,100 words; August 23, 2002)
This tip uses a phone book example to show how to build, configure, and run a simple wireless application. The example demonstrates connectivity between a WML (Wireless Markup Language) client device and the Tomcat Web server through a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) gateway. It also shows how to serve up a static WML document, and make an interactive request to a JSP (JavaServer Page) received from a WML client. (1,400 words; February 8, 2002)
