Web services test code generator
Klaus Berg has recently released a test-code generator for JUnit-based Web service clients. If you're developing Web services using Axis2 and XMLBeans this wizard could turn your JUnit test client coding into a powerful code generation process. It also has uses for those using GUI-based testing tools like soapUI.

Newsletter sign-up

Sign up for our technology specific newsletters.

Enterprise Java
View all newsletters
Email Address:
JavaWorld.com > Java Micro Edition >

Java takes off into wireless space

Innovation fueled by Java's openness may be its recipe for success

By Theresa Gonzalez, JavaWorld.com, 03/28/02

What a difference a year makes. Java-enabled phones were just beginning to grace the JavaOne Pavilion floor in 2001; a year that resulted in sales of about 15 million Java-enabled devices, according to Sun Microsystems. This year, not only were Java-enabled phones pervasive, but so were wireless Java evangelists, touting Java's many benefits on the mobile device. According to Sun, more than 200 companies are delivering wireless Java applications today, and more than 100 million Java devices will be distributed this year (Nokia alone plans to deliver half that number). If JavaOne 2002 is any indication, Java, specifically Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME), is truly taking off in the wireless space, even if it has been slow to get there.

"One of the biggest differences we're seeing from last year is vertical market applications, customized applications for specific vertical markets like transportation, healthcare, and law enforcement," says Rajiv Mehta, director of business development and e-business operations at Motorola. "You'll also see an increase in the number of handsets supporting J2ME, so you'll see entry-level phones, high-end phones, phones with color displays, phones with black-and-white displays...."

J2ME benefits

With WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) failing to deliver, J2ME has gained significant momentum over the past year. Some of J2ME's appeal to handset manufacturers and operators is its ability to run on top of any device's operating system, rich graphical user interfaces, persistent memory, offline functionality, and most important, a large programmer base, which Sun now estimates at more than 3 million developers.

"Java provides our customers a way to store data on the device, which they're not able to do in the WAP scenario today," says Eileen Mercilliott, group manager for J2ME products and developer program at Nextel. "There are some cases where WAP works perfectly well, but if our customers have any storage locally on the device and want to use the application when they're out of network coverage, it is a very compelling case to be able to use Java."

For Java developers, J2ME is the obvious choice. Gustavo Eliano de Paula, a software engineer for Brazil-based Cesar, uses J2ME to develop game software. Like most Java developers, he started using Java to develop server-side applications. Currently under contract with Motorola, de Paula felt it was a natural transition to use J2ME for mobile development. "We already knew Java was a great solution for us because it's the type of environment that's not available anywhere else for cell phones," he says. "J2ME is very well specified and provides the resources that developers need to develop mobile applications."

Michael Yuan, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, uses J2ME and J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) to develop mobile research applications for projects in the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce. "Java is a well designed OO (object-oriented) language," he says. "The main strengths of J2ME are cross-platform compatibility; tight integration with J2EE backends; VM and garbage collection to guard against memory leaks; and its industry and tools support."

Resources