InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
October 18, 1999
Internet Apps Go WAP!By Jason Levitt
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hat's so important about wireless handheld devices? There are lots of them. Lots and lots and lots of them. And, it seems, everyone doing business has one. Pagers, cell phones, Palm Pilots, and Windows CE devices--they all can communicate over wireless networks. With just a few exceptions during the last few years, wireless communication has been limited largely to voice and one-way text transmission. Only recently have standards been put in place offering developers and service providers the incentive to build robust Web applications for these tiny devices.
The standard that is galvanizing developers is called WAP, or Wireless Application Protocol, a communications protocol and application server development standard for wireless handheld devices. This standard, unlike so many others, has two very important things going for it: First, there are no important competing standards, and second, everyone appears to agree that this will be THE standard. A product of the nonprofit WAP Forum, whose members include, it seems, every major wireless player in the industry plus Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Sun, and Unisys, WAP describes all the major software technology pieces necessary to build end-to-end Web applications that can interact with wireless handheld devices.
What kinds of things might these applications do? Just think about any small piece of data that your employees might need in real time: a stock quote, business-card information, prices, E-mail, driving directions, appointment times. Then consider how your WAP-capable application server could be linked with your existing IT infrastructure to deliver that information wherever, and whenever, your employees need it.
Throw in some choice visionary statistics, and you've got the makings of an IT imperative: an estimated 1 billion cell phones in use by the year 2005, according to Gartner Group's projections, and an estimated $80 billion wireless data market by the year 2010, according to the consulting firm Analysys Ltd. ("Data over Mobile: Commercial Strategies for Mobile Operators," April 1999). Just about anyone who offers content or significant Web infrastructure is a potential player in this market. And companies such as Oracle and HP are already committing some serious resources to this wireless application development space.
Design Some Pages
Developing Web applications with WAP is just like building an application with any application server. WAP specifies a markup language, Wireless Markup Language, and a scripting language, WMLscript, that are optimized for the tiny displays and extremely low bandwidth found on wireless handheld devices. An easy way to get your feet wet is to design and offer up some static Web pages from your Web site that are written using WML. Any wireless device that is WAP-enabled and has a compliant Web browser will be able to browse your site and retrieve those pages for viewing on a cell phone, pager, or personal digital assistant. WML is easy for Web developers to understand, though it requires a different approach to page design than typical Web pages.
WML pages are organized as "cards," which are like tiny Web pages (typically less than 50 bytes) that can be easily linked and cached within the tiny amount of memory found in these wireless handheld devices. It's an easy enough metaphor to understand, and it's quite powerful when applications are carefully designed. WAP designers have to be very aware of the limited resources of most handheld devices and design their WML pages and applications accordingly. Images can be used, but typically are tiny 1-bit bit-mapped images. Though WML is easy for Web designers to grasp, I highly recommend reading Phone.com's guide to writing user-friendly applications for wireless devices before actually putting any such pages on a Web site. (You must first register at Phone.com's site to download this document).
Here are a few quick deployment tips for your WML files: WML files are just text files with filenames that end with the .wml extension. Your Web server will need to send out the correct MIME type (text/vnd.wap.wml) to identify the file as a WML file. Our Web server is not configured to send out the correct MIME type for WML files, but I've created a WML page here that you can take a look at. You can find technical references for WML, and for all of the WAP software technologies, at the WAP Forum site.
A Cool Development Kit
The WML standard didn't just come out of nowhere. It was largely derived from a previous effort called HDML, or Handheld Devices Markup Language, which was developed by Phone.com, one of the founders of the WAP Forum and the makers of a popular Web browser for handheld devices. Phone.com, it turns out, also gives away a very cool development kit that you can use to test your WML pages and WAP applications. You can download the UP.SDK here.
The UP.SDK includes the UP.Simulator, basically a software cell phone that simulates the retrieval, display, and execution of Web pages and applications.
Figure 1 shows the UP.Simulator displaying the first card from my example WML file.
More Technology
I've only touched on WAP software technologies in this column. To build real WAP applications, you'll need an application server that can run WML script. Also, WAP includes features for handling security protocols for wireless devices and has other capabilities that require new software support. A good place to start looking for WAP tools and solutions is on Phone.com's alliance page.
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