New Mobile Service Architecture will include IMS Service API

The Mobile Service Architecture (MSA) specifies a standardized set of APIs that allows developers to access various capabilities - from sending SMS messages to accessing the address book information - on mobile phones. Ericsson is a member of the expert group that is drafting the upcoming second version of MSA, which will include an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) API.

Java Micro Edition (ME) developers were treated with an overview of the current and forthcoming versions of MSA on May 8, in technical session held by Kay Glahn, consultant at Vodaphone, and Erkki Rysä, technical manager at Nokia.

Glahn said that improving and extending the current MSA will make more advanced smartphone features available to Java ME developers, as well as reduce ambiguity and fragmentation in the current MSA.

According to Glahn, the interoperability that MSA creates in the Java-enabled phone market, will allow developers write applications for a bigger market and thereby make more profit. MSA makes it easier to both develop applications and deploy them on different types of handsets. Manufacturers and operators, meanwhile, will benefit from a larger developer community that turns out more applications, since this means both increased demand for MSA-compatible devices and telecom service usage. Finally, Glahn argued, end users will get a benefit from the wider choice of available applications.

”There will be benefits for the whole industry, for all players in the ecosystem, which is something that is very good for the developer community,” Glahn said.

Unlike the first version of MSA (specified in JSR-248), MSA 2 does not only cover Java feature phones (CLDC phones), but also more advanced phones (CDC phones). MSA 2 will specify three different sets of API – a limited, a core, and a full set – for different types of phones, from low-end phones to advanced smartphones.

The final draft of a new version of MSA (MSA 2) is being drawn up in Java Specification Request (JSR) 249 and is being expected to be published in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Since MSA 2 will be fully backwards compatible with the already existing MSA 1, Rysä’s message was clear:
”There is no reason not to start developing devices now because there are already MSA-compliant devices out there.”

Magnus Olsson, responsible for Java ME standards at Ericsson, and member of the JCP executive committee

(EC) for Java ME says that MSA 2 will be much better adapted to market needs than MSA 1.

“The MSA initiative learned from past experience that rather than creating a large set of APIs, one-size-fits-all instead adapt to the available set of compelling device features while adding the benefits of reachability into new market segments,” Olsson says.

“A layered set of APIs will enable deployment on a significant increased market segment with mobile devices previously too limited for MSA. Feature phones and advanced smartphones will benefit from a consistent set of core APIs that can be extended with additional APIs for specific device features adding capabilities such as location, enhanced multimedia and advanced communication services based on IMS.”

Included in MSA, is JSR-281 IMS Services API, with Ericsson as the specification lead. The API will allow developers to create applications that integrate with IMS networks, which is telecom industry’s preferred standard for delivering converged multimedia services. The JSR work have now been delivered to the JCP (Java Community Process) organization and is to be presented to the JCP executive committe for the final approval ballot.

“JSR-281 has been received with great appreciation by the industry, with operators already starting to show an interest how the new IMS API allow developers to benefit from using IMS, so there is a demand for compelling IMS applications that developers now can meet,” Olsson says. “The IMS API provides access to a core set of IMS features that will allow developers to create converged multimedia applications such as presence, push-to-talk, and video conferencing without having to deal with the more complex groundwork and underlying details of the IMS technology.”

By Olle Blomberg

Article about the Mobile Service Architecture (first version):
http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/msaintro/

JCP page about JSR-249:
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=249

JCP page about JSR-248:
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=248

JCP page about JSR-281:
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=281

Yet another two articles…

• IMS-enabled minigolf community cathes developers’ attention
• Spreading the SailFin and SIP message

Photos

Articles about SailFin and Neil Young

Two more articles published today, one about project SailFin, based on an interview with Sreeram Duvur at Sun, and one about Rich Green’s general session.

Quiz winner gets a smartphone

Jim Hofmann, Software Sales Engineer at Sun, was the lucky winner of a Sony Ericsson P1i smartphone yesterday. Hofmann won the quiz yesterday, hosted by Ericsson at the company’s booth in the JavaOne Pavilion.

This is Jim Hofmann’s first JavaOne. After receiving the prize, he said that the conference had been wonderful so far - “three thumbs up!”

Thanks to the quiz, he now knows a bit more about Ericsson. For example, he now knows that Ericsson is  a communication infrastructure vendor (which also happens to provide ISVs with developer tools), and not a mobile phone manufacturer (this is a common misconception).

Win a book!

In the press and analyst room at JavaOne, I got some promo material from Apress, who is targeting a readership of programmers and other IT professional. The material included free eBook give-aways.

If you’re the first person (and an IT professional) to comment on this blog post, I’ll provide you with a code that will allow you to download an ebook of your choice from to eBookshop.apress.com (at least, that’s what the promo material states).

Here’s Apress’ ebook catalog:

http://www.apress.com/ebook/catalog

JavaOne 2008 daily updates page

There is now a JavaOne 2008 daily updates page on the Ericsson Mobility World Developer Program web page, with links to the articles that I’ve written associated with JavaOne.

News from the GlassFish track at CommunityOne

CommunityOne is a free and open developer conference that preceded JavaOne 2008 today (Monday May 5). I was there to learn more about GlassFish, Sun open source enterprise application server. One lesson I learned was that you can use a GlassFish application to deploy intelligent heating control in order to reduce CO2 emissons, and monitor your heating on a mobile phone.

GlassFish is both the name of Sun’s most active open source community and the name of the application server that the community is developing. The community, which was launched on java.net in 2005 includes users, partners, testers, and, of course, developers. The current version, V2 UR2 (Update Release 2), of the application server is a reference implementation of Java Enterprise Edition (EE) 5.

Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, Distinguished Engineer at Sun, started off the first CommunityOne GlassFish session with an overview of open source development, the GlassFish community and the current version of the server. He said that not only do open-source community development lead to better products and more widespread adoption, it is also a viable model for business today.

In parallel with the open-source GlassFish application server, there is commercial application server now called the Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 UR2. While the commercial server consists of the same Java Archive (JAR) files, the commercial server comes with support from Sun and has gone through much more extensive testing and bug-fixing. To highlight the tight relationship between the open-source and the commercial branches of the development project, however, the commercial server will be called Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2 UR2 starting from next week, according to Pelegri-Llopart.

At the session, new features of the next “fully buzzword compliant” GlassFish version (V3), was also presented, by Jerome Dochez, Principal Engineer at Sun and GlassFish architect. The GlassFish V3 application server, currently its tp2 (Technology Preview 2) release, provides a much more modular, lightweight, extensible architecture.

“More and more people want choice, they don’t just want Java EE, they don’t just want Ruby on Rails [a free web application framework]. Instead, they want an environment where they have the choice of doing a bit of their application in this environment and another bit of the application in a different environment,” Dochez said after the session.

GlassFish v3’s module management will give application developers this choice. Not only various types of services can be added to the application server, but because of modular approach in V3, the services can also be started or stopped on demand. Application developers typically do not need to learn about these details, however.

“To the application developer, the new features in GlassFish v3 does not change anything, which is what he or she wants. You just want to take your application in its native original format without having to go through a complicated war file repackaging and deploy it to the application server. That’s it,” Dochez says.

There was also a “lightning talks” GlassFish session where six speakers each gave a 5-10 minute talk about various projects in the GlassFish community. Christer Boberg, expert in IP Multimedia Applications at Ericsson, was one of the speakers. He gave a brief introduction to SailFin, the GlassFish Communication Server, which is built on an application server that Ericsson contributed to the SailFin project at last year’s JavaOne.

Christer Boberg

Another speaker was Java Champion and Java EE expert Adam Bien, who talked about GreenFire, a system which allows him to automatically manage the heating system of Bien’s home in Bavaria, Germany, in order to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The system gives him an RSS feed every 5 minutes with information about the current state of the heating system, the external temperature and the weather for example. The information can, of course, be read off from a mobile phone

Adam Bien

Bien’s conclusion:

“Hacking Java EE 5 is good for the environment!”

By Olle Blomberg

Related links:

CommunityOne:
http://developers.sun.com/events/communityone/

GlassFish:
https://glassfish.dev.java.net/

SailFin:
https://sailfin.dev.java.net/

GreenFire:
https://greenfire.dev.java.net/

JavaOne: Press and analysts at work

Hectic reporters working against the deadline in the JavaOne press room.

Two more articles

Two more pre-JavaOne articles published today:

Taking mobile application development out of the niche, based on an interview with C. Enrique Ortiz, who was nice enough to mention the article on his blog.

Convergence on show at JavaOne, which gives an overview of the various demos that Ericsson will host in their booth at JavaOne.