A draft specification for JSR 185, Java Technology for the Wireless Industry, is available for public review. This JSR will provide an overall architectural description and integrated Technology Conformance Kit (TCK) and Reference Implementation (RI) to coordinate selected JCP efforts for the wireless industry.
In the past two years a number of JSRs that apply to the wireless communications industry have been initiated. A primary focus has been on the use of J2ME technologies in the wireless handset: MIDP (JSR-37), MIDP 2.0 (JSR-118), Wireless Messaging API (JSR-120). In addition, a number of complementary efforts are currently underway: Mobile Media API (JSR-135).
J2ME technologies have been very successful in the wireless industry. The MID Profile is incorporated into a wide variety of products. Not only are handset vendors supporting it, but implementations for PDAs are available, and implementations for other devices are certain to follow. What is not clear, and is not within the scope of any existing JSR, is how the various technologies associated with the MID Profile work together to form a complete handset solution for the wireless services industry.
What is needed is a clear exposition of an overall architecture, which would include:
- Which optional packages fit with which profiles - How an end-to-end solution for interoperable Java applications could work - How the migration of applications can occur and to which profiles as the devices become more capable.
In addition, it would be beneficial if coordination of new JSRs and recommendations for new optional packages could take place within the context of the wireless development community as a whole.
This JSR expert group (EG) will provide an overall architectural description of a wireless client software stack. An integrated reference implementation (RI) and technology compatibility kit (TCK) bundle will be provided for the described technologies. In addition, this EG will provide advice to the JCP ME Executive Committee and other relevant bodies on the industry and associated technology.
This is an extremely important JSR for Java on the mobile terminal if you ask me. At the moment MIDP1.0 is very successful, but already problems occur when trying to programm a MIDP application for a mobile terminal since many vendors of terminals provide their own extensions. With MIDP2.0, which was designed by most of the important players in the field, many of these extension are incorporated into the standard API, but, as Artima's news from recent days shows, already many extension API's are being defined. This means that developers once again have to make the choice whether they use one of these API's and become less portable, or become very portable and not use the API's.
The Java community needs strict guidance when it comes to defining new optional packages in order to compete with 'closed gardens' like MS, NTT DoCoMo, Brew etc. The latter ensure that all applications written against their API will run on all their proprietary phones. Being able to run on all Java phones is something that is not true for most Java applications that are out on the market at the moment (despite java's original selling point 'write once, run anywhere'), the reason being the wildgrow of extensions. Guidance is thus needed.
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