Mobile Application Development Best Practices
In a recent Gartner survey, Fortune 500 CIOs were asked to identify and rank issues
associated with mobility and applications development. The majority of the CIOs identified
integrating wireless/mobile products with existing corporate infrastructure as their most
pressing concern.
This is not surprising because wireless access to corporate applications has become a market
differentiator and a competitive advantage for most enterprises. Providing wireless access to
corporate applications, building a long-term strategy for mobile applications and building a
suitable wireless mobile architecture are significant challenges in the years ahead.
As enterprises shift toward extending core applications to handheld devices, they find many
architectural models and solutions. Some of these strategies may require rewriting the existing
application, creating a wrapper around the application, or exposing it as a component object
module or distributed component object module (COM/DCOM) object. Other strategies require
upgrading the back-end servers to promote efficient mobility application development.
As it stands today, the wireless industry provides no generally agreed definitions of
enterprise mobility architectures. In fact, mobility architectures are largely dependent on the
application. The following archetypes describe a variety of mobility implementations with a new
vocabulary for mobility data networking and are the foundation of this document. Wireless
archetypes are tested, architectural master designs after which similar implementation
instances are patterned. Archetypes also provide a reference against which new designs can be
compared. They embody best practices that are useful when designing and implementing enterprise
wireless solutions.
A dictionary definition of Archetype is:
"The original model from which all things of the same kind are copied or which they are
based; a model of the first form; prototype."
A pattern (as defined by this document) is an implementation instance of an
Archetype. An example is the archetype Short Messaging Service (SMS). SMS can be implemented
via several patterns, including Direct Binds or Message Aggregators.
For cellular networks, every archetype must include the radio access network and the core
network as basic building blocks from the carrier. However, IP addressing, security,
application availability/performance considerations, devices, and applications for devices are
also part of the archetype that must be cooperative with the customer's enterprise network.
The following archetypes are discussed in this section:
- IP-Based Mobility Data archetype describes models for establishing and
maintaining wireless data session connectivity for IP-based traffic.
- Highly Secure archetype describes highly secure solutions using a layered
security approach.
- Highly Available archetype describes a high reliability, redundant and
scalable solution for critical services.
- Device Mesh/Telemetry archetype describes flexible transport capability
from measuring devices by meshing different technologies and network standards.
- Coverage Enhancement archetype describes how enterprises can provide
wireless coverage in remote and in-building locations.
- E-Mail archetype describes best practices that enterprises can follow in
order to provide e-mail and Personal Information Management (PIM) connectivity.
- Short Messaging archetype describes SMS-based text messaging, alert
notification, and wake up services for enterprises.
- Information Aggregation archetype provides information access from a
mobile device to a variety of enterprise data sources with data mash-up capability.
- Fixed Mobile Convergence archetype describes elements of both fixed and
wireless voice and data communications that offer a consistent set of features.
Each wireless archetype may contain one or more architectural "patterns" or themes that
reflect implementation options. These patterns contain common elements that can be replicated
in a predictable manner in order to successfully implement wireless archetypes.
