This book aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to Wireless programming using J2ME. In particular it concentrates on the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP). The authors assume that the reader is familiar with Java but has no knowledge of J2ME or experience in application development for wireless devices.
Structured into two main parts, the first part comprises of four chapters and introduces wireless application development in general followed by Java for wireless devices. The architecture of the Java 2 platform and its three editions is explained and the place of J2ME in this architecture described.
A number of wireless devices supporting J2ME are highlighted and then the reader is introduced to application development via a Hello World example. The J2ME Wireless Toolkit from Sun Microsystems is used for building the application and obtaining and installing this is detailed. An extremely useful chapter is dedicated to packaging and deploying Java wireless applications. Part one of the book leaves the reader with a good overview of developing wireless applications with Java.
The Second part of the book concentrates on the details and covers three major aspects, the Graphical User Interface, network programming and XML data exchange. Both high level and low-level user interface development is covered. The high level interface provides a platform independent toolkit with no control over the look and feel of the components used. On the other hand the low-level API provides full control over component appearance as well as the capability to handle low-level events. Both receive a detailed treatment with good code examples included to emphasise the main points. J2ME MIDP defines a simple record oriented database (RMS) and this forms the subject of a chapter that demonstrates the facility. The MIDP network-programming API is described and its differences from the J2SE network API highlighted. The section on using XML in wireless applications is welcome and gives a good overview together with details on a number of lightweight parsers suitable for mobile applications.
The book finishes by dedicating a chapter to the development of a complete mobile application. This leads the reader through application architecture, communication with the server to data presentation and nicely completes the J2ME picture.
In summary, this book provides a good introduction to wireless application development with Java. My only criticism is that the overview of wireless application development and the architecture of J2ME are very short and appear rather rushed. That aside, anybody wanting an introduction to this subject will find the book useful.C#, Python etc.
