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 Wireless application servers: Software application architecture has changed tremendously since the inception of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. Client-server applications that were becoming cost-inefficient due to scalability, maintainability and performance issues took a huge leap forward as the software world quickly shifted to an "n-tier" mode of operation. While networked applications that simply consisted of multiple identical clients and a monolithic server were termed "two-tier" applications, the term n-tier was coined to describe a class of applications that was made up of a number of moving parts located on multiple operating platforms and likely using completely different technologies. N-tier applications typically consist of disparate clients, one or more middle tier server components containing a large portion of the application logic and one or more back-end server systems. Client-side application platforms typically include Windows applications, Web applications and, yes, even wireless applications all running side-by-side in the enterprise. The back-end server systems are typically relational databases, mainframe applications or other ERP-class packaged applications. The glue holding all of these complex pieces together is a new breed of software product known as the "application server." Application servers allow the construction and hosting of multiple applications within a single container using a single technology all while offering a host of high-end features such as transaction monitoring, enterprise application integration and load balancing. Given that application servers support the consolidation of business logic and back-end integration within a single software product, adding support for wireless devices was a natural fit for most application server vendors. The majority of commercial application servers provide support for XML and the Java 2 Enterprise Edition, or J2EE, architecture, allowing an application to separate the client-side look and feel from the server-side business logic. Let's take a look at several of the leading application server products on the market, with an eye toward their support for wireless applications and devices. IBM WebSphere IBM's WebSphere product line, like many of IBM's products, is an entire suite of disparate applications, tools and server suites that are all based around the same core technology. WebSphere makes use of Java technology throughout and excels, as expected, in the area of enterprise data integration and e-business transactions. WebSphere supports J2EE, CORBA, ActiveX and SOAP and integrates with other IBM enterprise offerings such as MQSeries. IBM also offers the WebSphere Transcoding Publisher for use in wireless application development. The Transcoding Publisher server software makes use of XML/XSL to transform content from one markup language to another (i.e., HTML to voiceXML, XML to WML, etc.). IBM's WebSphere Everyplace Suite is a complete wireless product offering made up of the Everyplace Wireless Gateway (for interfacing between an IP-based network and a wireless communications network such as GSM, CDMA, GPRS, DataTAC or Mobitex), the WebSphere Transcoding Publisher, MQSeries Everyplace and the Everyplace Synchronization Manager. This product, when combined with IBM's DB2 Everyplace product, gives the company a complete mobile/wireless offering that can handle virtually any client type on any network or operating platform. Oracle 9iAS Wireless Oracle's 9iAS Wireless product also predominantly makes use of Java (to go along with Oracle's own PL*SQL language). 9iAS is one of the first J2EE-certified application servers and, as you might expect, it integrates well with the Oracle database server and Oracle application suite. The 9iAS Wireless edition has garnered some attention recently as it is the product behind Sprint PCS' Wireless Web portal. 9iAS Wireless includes an advanced personalization engine that supports the use of alerts and the creation of branded portals. Its messaging engine can support a number of messaging formats, including e-mail, SMS and WAP. The Oracle 9i Lite database product can be combined with the 9iAS wireless product to provide advanced mobile solutions for disconnected users. One key differentiating feature between Oracle's wireless application server product and most of its competitors is its support for location-based services. 9iAS supports LBS on a number of fronts by including interfaces to mobile positioning servers from companies such as SignalSoft Corp., CellPoint Corp. and Nokia, as well as location-based APIs for geocoding, routing, yellow pages and mapping. BEA WebLogic BEA's WebLogic application server is the market leader and, like those discussed earlier, relies primarily on Java as the development technology of choice. WebLogic is fully J2EE-compliant and includes support for Web services technologies such as SOAP, WDSL and UDDI. WebLogic has become popular in large-scale environments due to its support for failover, clustering and load balancing on an application or even down to a component/servlet level. The BEA WebLogic M-Commerce Solution integrates the WebLogic application server with the Nokia WAP server to deliver a powerful WAP solution. Unlike the products from IBM and Oracle, BEA does not include out-of-the-box support for other wireless technologies such as i-mode, SMS or voiceXML at the current time. Microsoft Mobile As it is the world's largest software company, many have awaited Microsoft's release of its first wireless server product: the Mobile Information Server. Finally, the product appears to be nearly upon us and a beta version was available from Microsoft at the time of this writing. While the majority of application server vendors have chosen Java as the technology to build their products around (due to its popularity among developers and its cross-platform and object-oriented benefits), Microsoft is pursuing a different tact by touting Mobile Information Server's integration with Microsoft's own .NET framework. MIS will act as both a wireless gateway and a server for technologies such as Microsoft's ASP.NET Mobile Web Forms to allow a repository of markup forms to be delivered to a variety of devices, including WAP and Microsoft Mobile Internet Explorer clients. MIS also integrates Microsoft Outlook Mobile Access to enable mobile/wireless access to a corporation's in-house Outlook messaging system. Finally, MIS includes server-based versions of their ActiveSync syncing software for Windows CE clients and management console plug-ins for administering the Mobile Information Server product. Final Notes… As you can see, wireless application server tools have become very advanced, very quickly. While application developers were forced to build custom WAP or voiceXML applications just a short time ago, they now can integrate these applications within a larger enterprise framework thanks to the extremely advanced application server products available on the market. Vendors such as IBM and Oracle also offer complete database and synchronization solutions for mobile workers who may not have wireless connectivity 100 percent of the time. Look for this market segment to continue to mature in coming years to a point at which, many predict, the application server will become the new "operating system" of the network. As client platforms quickly become irrelevant from an application development and deployment standpoint, the capability and reliability of the middle tier will become all important in the n-tier future.
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