Advanced MIDP Networking, Accessing Using Sockets and RMI from MIDP-enabled Devices

The Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) provides a Generic Connection Framework that can be used to develop network-based applications. In addition, the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) provides the HttpConnection interface, which is part of the javax.microedition.io package, that defines the necessary methods and constants for an HTTP connection. HTTP is the only protocol a MIDP implementation must support, all other protocols are optional. For example, in the reference implementation from Sun, there is no support for either Transport Control Protocol (TCP) sockets or User Datagram Protocol (UDP) datagrams.

In addition, the K Virtual Machine (KVM) does not support all the Java language and virtual machine features, either because they are too expensive to implement or their presence would impose security issues. For example, there is no support for object serialization, and consequently there is no support for Remote Method Invocation (RMI) either. The benefit of mobile applications, however, becomes real when you can access critical business data and Internet resources efficiently from anywhere you go.

This article presents a quick overview of the CLDC/MIDP networking mechanisms, then it discusses a middleman architecture that enables the use of Java sockets and Remote Method Invocation (RMI) from MIDP-enabled devices. This article:

Gives you a brief overview of CLDC and MIDP Networking
Discusses a middleman architecture for using sockets, RMI, and other Internet services
Shows you how to use sockets from MIDP-enabled devices
Shows you how to send emails from your MIDP-enabled device
Shows you how to use RMI from MIDP

To complete the article:
http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/midp/articles/socketRMI/