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March 12, 2005
Web services in smartphones – Part 2
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In the previous article, we elaborated on the promise of mobile Web services. In this article, you can read about example applications as well as plans for including Web services in Series 60 devices.
Web services – also beyond the enterprise
Web services technology can be used in several ways. As described in the first article, Web services are emerging as a technology of choice for enterprises. With the convergence between mobile and enterprise domains, it is important that generic Web services protocols are implemented. For consumers as well as for business-to-business scenarios, it is essential to meet the needs of identity and security when deploying Web services. By including support for Liberty Alliance’s Identity Web Services Framework specifications, it is possible to offer identity-based, secure and privacy-aware Web services for any application.
Example applications
Enterprise and Consumer application example: Address book
This application, developed by Nokia and Trustgenix, shows how the user can be authenticated to, discover and invoke an address book service, such as a public phone book or an enterprise-internal database with contact information. Through simple search commands, the user can find the contact information he needs, and store it in the device’s contact book.
Media Application: Radio@AOL
Radio@AOL was the basis for a joint proof-of-concept by AOL, Nokia, SUN Microsystems and Trustgenix and demonstrates how a user can access the Radio@AOL service with a single click. The implementation is based on Liberty’s ID-WSF specifications, which enable seamless authentication, discovery and invocation of the service. It is also possible to set up a list of preferred radio stations, making the service even more convenient for users. The demonstration is an excellent example of how the same protocols can be implemented in any device, bringing true convergence between the fixed and mobile domains.
Enterprise and Consumer application examples: CISS
The Community Information Share Service (CISS) is a joint concept demonstration by Nokia, Trustgenix and Vodafone and demonstrates the use of Identity Web services in a distributed device and server environment. A group of people sharing the same interest (business or personal) can easily create a forum to communicate with each other, set up meetings, share information about forthcoming events and more.
The demo showcases a system of Web Service Consumer (WSC) and Web Service Provider applications (WSP) on both mobile devices and servers, sharing and accessing each member's device calendar and contact book data. It illustrates how a mobile device can act as a WSP using the Nokia Web Services Framework for Nokia Series 60 devices. The WSP functionality is not yet supported in commercial device implementations, but this demo illustrates the difference such features can make once available. As an example, if a user wants to invite other community members for a meeting, the WSP functionality of each member’s devices display their respective calendars, informing the inviter of any conflicts.
A few words from a developer:
The company Yomi cites a number of positive experiences from developing solutions based on the Nokia Web Services framework:
- Ready to use APIs reduced the development time of the Symbian client
- The size of the source code was reduced by 30% due to the communication solutions in Nokia Web Services framework
- Reliability of the software increased
- Custom solutions were replaced with standard and proven solutions.
Availability in Series 60 devices
In order to accommodate both enterprise-centric, consumer and business-to-business Web services applications, Series 60 devices need to support both Basic Web services and Identity-based Web services. When developing applications based on Identity-based Web Services, the developer is treated with simple application programming interfaces to the underlying standardized technologies (authentication, discovery service, service invocation, etc.). This minimizes the development effort and supports several different ways of utilizing the technologies.
For Series 60, the following implementations will be available during 2005:
- Downloadable component for 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 2.
- Series 60, 3rd Edition, will contain built-in Web services functionality. In the first phase of implementations, applications based on C++ are supported.
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