Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

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Client–Server Platforms for Mobile Services

In this chapter, we will look at how to deliver mobile services using the client–server (CS) architecture. CS architecture is the predominant approach for many mobile applications due its widespread usage in the Web 2.0 platform, which is now seen as the basis for building wireless services. We have already discussed that this is not necessarily the case for all services and applications, but that the significance of the Web demands our attention. The next most significant platform is probably the IMS architecture; we shall look at this in Chapter 14.

The underlying technology should be highly flexible and, as much as possible, allow the service creators to invest most of their available resources into only creating those parts of the service that are distinct and add value, rather than creating general infrastructural components. In our following discussion, we suggest that the entire mobile network (the device, RF, IP and content networks) is really only a chain of software services. In essence, a good deal of the required services are intimately associated with assets that the operators own, therefore the responsibility to make these accessible as a platform lies on their shoulders and no one else's. This is still a major challenge. We shall look at possible approaches to this problem after our consideration of the underlying software technology. There are two approaches that have emerged. One is from the telecoms world itself, which ...