Features and benefits
The WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for Web 2.0 and Mobile V1.1.0 provides developers with ready-to-use components to extend service-oriented architecture (SOA) by connecting web services, SOA services, and Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) objects into interactive desktop-web and mobile web user interfaces. With this Feature Pack, WAS applications developed initially for desktop browsers can now be adapted and deployed to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Key aspects of the Feature Pack include:
A standards-based programming model for application developers: Reliance on industry-accepted technologies, including Dojo, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), Representational State Transfer (REST) Web services, and Apache Wink.
Reuse of existing enterprise infrastructure: As a natural extension to WebSphere Application Server, the feature pack leverages back-end core capabilities through RESTful services, enabling easy connectivity between mobile clients and existing server-side components.
Leveraging existing skills: Ajax developers reuse their desktop-browser experience. No need to learn mobile-specific or device-specific programming languages.
Minimizing redesign of applications: Regular desktop web applications are poorly displayed on mobile devices and are barely usable. The feature pack provides standard-based technology to create mobile web content. This is based on the distribution of the Dojo Toolkit and REST APIs, offering a large collection of core services and user interface widgets.
Easy creation of mobile-friendly content: Resulting web sites can be used across different mobile platforms, with almost native look and feel. Style sheets for smartphones are available to deliver a user experience compatible with both mobile device capabilities and the user's expectation.
WAS Feature Packs are optionally installable product extensions that offer targeted, incremental new features and capabilities. For existing WAS customers, the Feature Pack for Web 2.0 and Mobile is available at no additional cost via download for production use, given proof of entitlement (PoE) for the Feature Pack's prerequisite WebSphere Application Server product (see Hardware and Software Requirements).
New in V 1.1:
The Dojo Toolkit 1.7 is included, and enables the building of rich user experiences with Ajax and mobile web. This includes new widgets, new skins for mobile platforms, and a list of client-side services intended to improve user experience.
New mobile and rich Internet application (RIA) building blocks are added, including directory listing service, file upload service, graphics conversion service, logging/debug/analytics capture service, device/browser detection service.
A Dojo-based diagram component is now available, to enable the creation of rich web and mobile applications with needs to display networks, processes, and any other types of diagrams.
Technologies used
IBM Dojo Diagrammer
This feature pack comes with ILOG Dojo Diagrammer, a new widget with advanced diagramming and graph layout capabilities built on top of the open source Dojo Toolkit. The purpose of Dojo Diagrammer is to provide a solution for Ajax applications to display graphs, or networks, of nodes connected by links. The diagramming component includes sophisticated graph layout algorithms that can be run through a server-side REST service or locally on the client using JavaScript algorithms.
RESTful web services
Driven by developer needs for simplicity and Web 2.0 style application requirements, RESTful web services are a popular alternative for exposing business logic in web applications. REST is an architectural style that uses multiple standard technologies like HTTP, XML, ATOM, and HTML. REST is used to define flexible applications based on the notion of resources. A resource is simply any data that you want to share on the web that you can identify by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
Apache Wink
Apache Wink is an open source software project hosted by the Apache Software Foundation that provides an implementation of JAX-RS. In addition, Apache Wink provides key capabilities to enable common application development needs beyond that which is defined in the JAX-RS standard. The IBM distribution of Apache Wink includes JAX-RS 1.1 server runtime.
Ajax Development Toolkit
With hundreds of proprietary and open Ajax implementations available, developers and architects are faced with yet another tough technology adoption challenge. The question is which Ajax platform will emerge as an enterprise standard. IBM has adopted the open-source Dojo toolkit (dojotoolkit.org) as its internal standard, is a key contributor to the Dojo project, and a committed member of the Dojo Foundation. The IBM commitments to the Dojo project include enterprise features such as internationalization, data binding, and accessibility support.
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