A hint of what is coming… I recently changed jobs and I have a new role as a Mongo guy. I jumped into this role from another job where I was a Silverlight and ASP.NET MVC guy. Before that I was a Oracle/Oracle Lite/J2EE guy. Give Me a Technology and I will code in it!

Make sure you also have JDK 1.5 installed as well.

Now, you want to start the Oracle Universal Installer by going to the Disk1\install of your DMS download and select setup.exe.  For the ORACLE_HOME location, select the GlassFish install directory (i.e. c:\oracle\glassfish).

Select the Server installation and click next.  When the wizard asks you to run the repwizard, just say “No” for now.  We can run this later.  I have a 10.3.0.3 repository on my machine, so my portion should just upgrade and migrate the server and applications.

Once the wizard is done, navigate to c:\oracle\glassfish\Mobile\Server\admin and run repwizard.bat.

This is the only new screen in the Repository Wizard.  The admin port is the glassfish administration console port. And the server port is your sync servers port.

Check to see if mobileserver domain installed successfully:

C:\Oracle\app\glassfish\bin>asadmin stop-domain mobileserver
CLI306 Warning – The server located at C:\Oracle\app\glassfish\domains\mobileser
ver is not running.
Command stop-domain executed successfully.

C:\Oracle\app\glassfish\bin>asadmin start-domain mobileserver
Waiting for mobileserver to start …………………
Successfully started the domain : mobileserver
domain  Location: C:\Oracle\app\glassfish\domains\mobileserver
Log File: C:\Oracle\app\glassfish\domains\mobileserver\logs\server.log
Admin Port: 4848
Command start-domain executed successfully.

Now that the server is started, fire up a browser and go to http://yoururl.com/mobile

First thing you will notice is that Oracle has finally changed the look and feel of the login screen

And as you can see from the following screen, the GlassFish server is the mode that is currently running.

Let me know if you have questions and I will be glad to help out.

• The Oracle Database Mobile Server 11g supports synchronization from only two mobile clients, the Berkeley DB Mobile Client and the SQLite Mobile Client, to a back-end Oracle database.
• Automatic synchronization is supported for the Android platform.
• Device management is supported for the Android platform.
• Support for Berkeley DB encryption.
• Load balancing is now available through Oracle WebLogic Server Clusters or the Glassfish Cluster Server Instance instead of WebCache.
• Because of the removal of Web-to-Go, OC4J, and an installed application server, several of the configuration files, configuration parameters and utility names have been eliminated or modified. Refer to the documentation for specific details on each of these changes.
• There are new Java, native, and ADO.Net client synchronization and Sync Agent APIs. There is also a new pure Java synchronization client.

I have an iPhone 4 for work and my own personal Android device (Sony Ericsson Xperia X10).  My wife also has a Samsung Nexus S which I will refer to as well since it has a newer version of the Android OS than does the X10.  First off, I will tell you that I went to the iPhone kicking and screaming (not really, but it sounds good).  I really never wanted any Apple products, felt there wasn’t a need for them or their price tag.  So, I have gotten that out of the way.  But having said that, I will be giving my open an honest opinion about the iPhone regardless of my views on most/all Apple products

Size:
Not much between the phones in terms of size.  Both Android devices are slightly larger than the iPhone device… until you have to put the iPhone in an ugly protective case so you don’t lose your signal!  Yeah, I still find that funny.  Having said that, I like the added weight that the protective weight gives the phone.  It lets me know if the device is still in my pocket or back at my desk.  I actually prefer a heavier phone, but manufactures keep making them lighter.

Screen and Resolution:
Both the Androids have much larger screens than the iPhone, but the iPhone has a higher resolution, which makes things look pretty crisp.  For the real test , I played Angry Birds on all 3 devices, I liked the Nexus S the best by far.

Performance and Battery:
The X10 battery life is pathetic!  Their spec sheet says stand by times between 415 and 425 depending on the network, I say “Yeah right!”  I know those stats are never accurate, but I am assuming they did the test with a bare bones Android 2.1 installation without all the Sony Ericsson bloated software.  Truthfully, I would be lucky to get 36 hours of standby time on the X10.  The Nexus S is better with it’s battery management and standby times were closer to 72 hours which is reasonable. The iPhone, of the 3 seemed to have the best standby time, but the battery drains quickly with use.

My X10 still has Android 2.1, which makes everything lag on my phone.  I also have to run programs such as Task Panel Xtra to kill some of the bloated software like Face Recognition that the kind folks at Sony Ericsson provided the phone.  The software would routinely take up 99% of the CPU of the phone!  Insane right?  Both the Nexus S (Android 2.3) and the iPhone are sleek though.  They are both very smooth to the naked eye, there isn’t much between them.  Again, the test of Angry Birds was used and they both performed well without any lag unlike the X10.

Camera:
Here is where Sony Ericsson spent a lot of time on the product and left in a bunch of blunders.  The Xperia comes with Timescape and Mediascape. This is a really novel idea but because of either performance issues with Android 2.1 or the phone itself, I stay away from these two applications as much as possible.  Both Timescape and Mediascape come with cool plugins for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc and you can go to this dashboard and have either integrated views or separated by function.  The Xperia is so sluggish, that it is a waste of time and battery life keeping the thing up to date.  So, I have uninstalled all the plugins and barely ever sync it.  You can’t entirely remove the two applications unless you root the phone.  But I have digressed.  The Xperia comes with an 8.1 HD camera and the phone comes with a camera button so you can quickly take a photo… or at least you could try to quickly take a photo but this phone is so slow, it doesn’t really do anything quickly. Also, after you start the camera, you will have to kill the Face Recognition service again cause the camera fires it up.  Both the Nexus S and the iPhone feature a 5 megapixel camera and both phones have a front facing camera for facetime. The Samsung will do facetime either on WiFi or over your cellular network, but the iPhone will only work while on WiFi.  The one win so far that the X10 has is the Panoramic application from Sony Ericsson.  It is by far the best panoramic program I have seen out their for camera phones.

Notifications:
This part is OS specific.  Let me put it this way, the iPhone notifications stink!  If your phone is locked and you get an e-mail or a message and you don’t often mark your e-mails/messages as being read, you have no idea which application just got the message.  Furthermore, if you are away from your phone for a while, you will have to unlock your iPhone and check to see if you have received any messages/notifications.  It’s a complete guessing game.  The Android on the other hand has an notification bar along the top of the screen and you pull it down to look at what applications you received a notification from.  Both the Nexus S and the X10 have an LED light on the device that lets you know you have a notification.  The LED light on the Xperia changes color depending on the application that sent you the notification.  Not sure about the Nexus S as it is always in my wife’s possession.

Email (POP3 and Exchange):
I for one like the fact that the iPhone has a one stop Email client.  It is a limited client, but it is a one stop shop.  I have my work account (Exchange) and I have gmail and yahoo mail accounts.   The mail on all 3 gets pushed quickly to the phone, so I am always on top of the emails.  I can’t really search any of those emails, but at least they are in one place. The Androids come with gmail and a POP email client. The gmail client is great.  Does everything you would want a email client to do.  The default email client is much like the iPhone client, it’s a central location for your emails.  But like the iPhone, it can’t perform searches.  There is a decent email client for Android called K9 that supports IMAP, POP3 and Exchange 2003/2007 (with WebDAV).  I have tried it, but couldn’t get the push to work for my Yahoo mail, even though I have a IMAP on my Yahoo account.  My X10 comes with Moxier, so I was able to set up my Exchange email as well.  But, in the end, I got rid K9 and Moxier and just set up my gmail account to access my yahoo account.

The Interface:
When I first saw the iPhone, I often wondered if 1 button would be enough?  After using the iPhone for about 8 months now, I can honestly say, 1 button is not enough!  Different Android devices come with 3 buttons by default and some come with more.  The 3 buttons are Menu, Home, and Back.  Now, there is no standard as to how they are arranged on each Android device, but they are all there.  The Android 3.0 has these placed onscreen for Tablets, but they are there also.  Between the iPhone and the Android, I can navigate quicker through the Android than I can the iPhone.  The Android is more intuitive and really isn’t difficult to figure out how to get to anything.  One example is setting up WiFi.  The iPhone will annoyingly notify you of available WiFi in the area.  You could be driving down the road and try to make a call when the annoying notification comes up that you have picked up someones home network.  Yes, you can turn this off, but then you have to manually connect to the WiFi network by going into your Settings.  The Android displays a WiFi icon in it’s notification bar with a question mark through it.  If you want to connect to the available WiFi network, you simply select the notification and connect to the network.  It doesn’t interrupt you like the iPhone notifications do.  Other actions like long pressing the power button on the Android gives you the options to turn sound off, air plane mode, or power down.  Also, sliding the unlock pad from right-to-left turns the phone automatically to vibrate.  A long press on the iPhone just brings up the option to turn off the phone.  Androids also feature a long press as a touch screen function.  So, lets say I am in my email and I long press a selected email, it will give me options such as Read, Archive, Delete, Report Spam, etc.  The iPhone requires the developer to have placed that functionality on screen somewhere.

Music and Video:
For the Android, I use Winamp for my music. I can use the Winamp desktop to sync my files via WiFi, but I still hard wire the phone into my PC and I actually use Sony’s MediaGo to sync my files.  I don’t really use iTunes.  I know many people that use it and maybe those people can provide feedback on how slick it is.  But for now, I will stick with my Android and Winamp and be happy about it.  Video between the two, pretty much even.  I get YouTube on both.  But YouTube on iPhone manages my subscriptions better.  Strange, cause you would think that google would want to make YouTube experience on Android 100x better than on iPhone.

Keyboard:
The clear cut winner for keyboard interface is the Android.  I don’t mean the one that comes with Android, but Swype.  I know some Androids come with Swype pre-installed, but I had to install Swype on both my Androids.  Swype is a cool way to type.  Basically, you swype the keyboard and your fingers only leave the screen when you are done the word.  Also, if you need to get to an alternate key, you just perform a long press on the desired key and it will enter the character on screen for you without going to the alternate layout.  The Android 2.3 also has the added feature of Speech-to-Text on the keyboard.  You just select the Mic button on the keyboard and start talking.  Your dialog will be entered into the focused field.  Very cool feature that my X10 can’t use yet, but one of my wife’s most used feature on her Nexus S.

Applications:
Some people will use the argument that the iPhone has more applications hence the applications for the iPhone are better.  I wouldn’t be one of those people.  Since I have both phones, whenever I get an application/game for one phone, I will try and find it for the other.  Obviously there are device specific applications, but I have always been able to find similar applications that work on both phones.  The only application that I want on the Android that isn’t available for the Android in Canada yet is NetFlix.  It is suppose to be available for the Samsung Nexus S soon though.  I would imagine that for the next generation of Androids, this would be a standard feature.  Now, I don’t have data on this, but it seems to me that there are better free applications on the Android than the iPhone.  I am purely basing this on the number of applications that are loaded on my Android compared to my iPhone.

Conclusion:
Don’t buy an Xperia X10  Sony Ericsson already have the Arc and the Play out and from what I hear, they have fixed the most of the flaws that came out in the X10.  I would be interested in trying the others out and if there is a Sony Ericsson rep that would like to send me one to review I would be more than happy about the upgrade.   The Samsung Nexus S is a fantastic phone, but be prepared to install some applications after you start up the phone.  It has a bare bones Android system without any pre-installed software.  So, completely customize-able.  You can do worse than buying an iPhone.  On buying an iPhone, you will have to cover up that sexy exterior with a bulky piece of plastic and rubber so that you are able to make a decent phone call.

If you have any suggestions for improving my experience on the X10 or iPhone, leave a comment below.  And please, no Fanboy type bashing.  I am looking for honest discussions.

Update: I just upgraded the software on my X10.  So far, the device has been 100% more responsive.  I am having a small issue with “android.process.media has stopped unexpectedly.”  I am looking into it and correcting it, but the phone itself seems fine.  I removed some sony ericsson widgets off the bat and customizing the phone to my liking.

http://blogs.oracle.com/mobile/adf-mobile-client/#026377

• Do we keep the JSP/Struts application and run it on another platform like JBoss or Tomcat and just migrate from Oracle Lite to SQLite.
• Rewrite the application in another language and present the software as a thick client application.
• Rewrite the application to target multiple devices

With a new breed of devices (Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile), are you planning on keeping your application designed for the laptop only?  I am sure some of you are thinking with the G3/G4 networks and extended Wi-Fi connectivity, what is the need for a disconnected database/client application?  In the past, the need for the disconnected application was usually due to lack of network connectivity.  Today, the requirements have changed. Users/consumers are using these devices more then just the phone feature.  Actually, when was the last time a cell phone was actually purchased because of it’s superior phone qualities?

Moving away from the offline model?
Not so fast.  We seem to have network connectivity where ever we go now right, so why do we need an application offline?  Before I answer this, lets take a look at the classic offline application, the e-mail client.  You might say “well, I have web based mail” but web based mail really only serves you 25-50 e-mails at a time so you aren’t really accessing all your mail.  Most of the time you are accessing your mail via Outlook or Lotus Notes(10 years of torture for me) in an offline mode.  Even on your smartphone, your accessing your mail via offline mode and with some pushing/pulling/polling at given intervals.  In fact, the need for offline storage is becoming greater.  Think HTML5.  HTML5 allows for various client side techniques for storing data in a offline mode.  There are even synchronization features, although not as robust as Mobile Server, the features are available for simple synchronization.

Webtogo Application staying on a Web Platform
The trickiest part of staying on the web platform is the deployment and configuration.  You could stay with the JSP/Struts application and just migrate to Tomcat or JBoss.  The only thing that would require a change would be the database connections and authentication.  In most cases, applications using Webtogo just used Webtogo’s internal authentication methods, but that would have to change.

Migrating to Thick Client
A thick client application can be a quick alternative solution to the web platform application and can simplify the deployment and application provisioning.  You can still use the same sync and data model as your existing Webtogo application and you could easily apply that to a new thick client application.

Targeting Multiple Devices
Since the sync model can be reused, you can actually apply the sync model to more then one publication meaning the sync model can go to more then one platform.  So far, Mobile Server supports sync to Windows, Windows Mobile 6, Blackberry, Android and Linux environments.  I have heard rumors that iPhone / iPad support is around the corner but I haven’t heard anything definitely about when they (Oracle) would support deployment to Apple products.

My Experience with Various Platforms
Here is my personal experience with all of these platforms.  I have been involved in development with Webtogo, thick client, and smartphone applications.  The need for the Webtogo applications almost always has been tied to the need to build a web based application that require an offline component.  So, to eliminate some of the development effort the choice is usually to use Webtogo.  The biggest issues with the web and Webtogo applications is usually keeping deployments of the application files in sync.  Seemed to be an issue with Struts more then the JSP and HTML files, but that is a topic for another time.  The thin client and smartphone applications are the ones that you can knock out the quickest.  Fast to develop.  Easy to test. Easy to deploy and maintain.  With HTML5, if you still require a web based application that requires an offline component, HTML5 could be a solution for you.  If there is complex synchronization that is still required though, Mobile Server would be the solution that could work along side that application to enable more complex synchronization.

I would like to here from experiences of the Webtogo community and the concerns or excitement about moving towards something new.

• Geotagging and Geolocation
• Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Window Mobile (yeah, yeah, basically all the smartphones and tablets)
• Mobile Integration into an Enterprise Environment
• Device Management and Application Provisioning

My personal phone is a Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10.  I have used Mobile 6.1, and BlackBerry in the past, and my new work phone is suppose to be an iPhone 4.  So, hopefully my experience with those devices translates well to the wide variety of technologies out there today.

Topic:
Oracle’s Mobile Enterprise Application Platform

With an increased focus of Smartphones and Mobile devices in all industries, for architects it is important to understand how these devices and infrastructure will integrate as part of your enterprises architecture.

In this talk, we will look at Oracle’s Mobile Enterprise Application Platform and the components and technologies that makes up the platform (Berkeley BD, SQLite, WebLogic, Lite Mobile Server, JDeveloper, ADF Mobile, and Oracle Database).

When: February 14, 2011 @ 12:00 P.M to 1:00 P.M.

Where:
Moncton Public Library
644 Main St.
Moncton, N.B.

Sponsor:

Cost: FREE!!! Please register via eventbrite to help with the count.

Now he has provided two very good white papers on the comparison of the two products.

There are plenty of options in Berkeley DB that make the the database more stable then Oracle Lite on the mobile device.

I was playing around with the Berkeley DB last night and here are some of the features I could see really useful that Oracle Lite does not have out of the box or at least you aren’t able to change the default option.

• auto_vacuum – By turning on this option, basically it reduces the high watermark on the database when bulk of records are deleted. Oracle Lite has the use of the defrag tool, but that has to be run manually and it has to be provided to the users. It does not come built in. auto_vacuum has three modes: NONE, FULL, and INCREMENTAL. Read up on the auto_vacuum pragma here and the VACUUM statement here. Note that auto_vacuum does not defrag the database, but it can fragment it more. VACUUM command is the defrag option.
• journal_mode – Journal mode is the rollback segment of the database. I am not going to repeat all of the 6 modes but here is a quick highlight: OFF, DELETE, TRUNCATE, PERSIST, MEMORY, and WAL (Write-ahead-log). For users in a synchronization environment, the following may be your best options in the following order MEMORY, TRUNCATE, and DELETE (Normal Mode). Since most of your data is stored on the server, it is probably safe to use a rollback segment that is in volatile memory. Read more about the journal_mode here.
• synchronous – There are three modes here; FULL, NORMAL, and OFF. The default is FULL. What this pragma does is check the database on occasion to ensure that information is written to disk. So if your system crashes, you will be relatively safe from a corrupt database. Now with the mobile server, you always have a backup of your data on the server, so even if your client database becomes corrupt, completely refreshing the clients isn’t a problem. They will lose the data the was updated since the last sync. So, the damage is minimal. Knowing this, you can decide how synchronous you want your client database to be. By turning off the synchronous mode, some operations can improve by 50x. Something to consider.

As I get myself a little more familiar with Berkeley DB, I hope to have some more Do’s and Don’ts posted.



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