Mobile Devices and Web Services TOMAS KOZEL, ANTONIN SLABY Univerzity of Hradec Kralove Department of Informatics and Quantitative methods Rokitanskeho 62, 500 03 Hradec Kralove Czech Republic tomas.kozel@uhk.cz, antonin.slaby@uhk.cz Abstract: Service oriented architecture (SOA) presents one of modern approaches used in the process of informa- tion systems development . One of the technologies the SOA is based on are web services. Rapid development of capabilities of mobile devices (including PDAs, Smart phones or mobile telephones) as well as mobile networks opens the possibility of mobile devices to access the web services too. In this contribution there will be described selected approaches as well as models used in the process of implementation of a mobile client of information systems mainly those which make use of web services. Key–Words: mobile device, java, Java ME, SOA, web service, WSA, kSOAP, BlackBerry 1 Introduction At present mobile devices undergo rapid development which results in longer performance without charg- ing, better performance larges set of functions imple- mented for the use of customers and consequently the area of their potential use spreads constantly. Simi- lar progress can be seen and recognized in the area of mobile communication networks mainly in the area of mobile data services. Smart phones start to take con- trol of the market of pocket computers and communi- cators and the classical PDAs withdraw and disappear. The majority of mobile telephones recently supports mobile Java (Java ME), many communicators possess their own operating system (Symbian, Palm OS or Windows Mobile). All these platforms enable rela- tively easy opportunity to make mobile applications including data communication access. In connection with further modern trend in the area of management and software development - i.e. transition to service oriented architecture, there raises possibility to use the mobile devices as clients of these services. Using mo- bile clients brings quite new views and approaches in many business processes. Permanent access to up-to- date data of business information systems from any place is useful in many areas such as selling products (B2B, B2C), relations to the customer (CRM) etc. In the further text there will be described selected attitudes and subsequently technologies which are ap- plicable for the implementation of the client of infor- mation system (resp. of web service) on the mobile device. First will be mentioned solutions based on mobile Java technology (J2ME) and then the solution offered for BlackBerry R  platform developed by the firm Research In Motion (RIM). 2 Mobile attitude to information sys- tems Mobile devices that are equipped with the mobile edi- tion of java virtual machine (Java ME) are able to set up communication in the mobile data network making use of the HTTP protocol and selected models can use general socket connection. This capability is enabled for version MIDP 1.0 and later versions. The latest versions of mobile java can offer a row of application program interfaces (API), that significantly spread the capability of mobile applications. These APIs include also an interface for the access to the web services (WSA) [7]. In the following text there will be briefly described variants of the access to information sys- tems which are enabled by these technologies. 2.1 Proprietary solution of the communica- tion Classical solution of the problem of the access to the selected parts of information systems from mobile de- vice can be realized either by classical socket connec- tion and economic proprietary protocol or through the common HTTP( S) protocol. In both cases there is necessary to implement connector on the side of infor- mation system (or use a web server). The connector enables the mobile device the access to the selected functions and data of information system. This solu- 7th WSEAS International Conference on APPLIED COMPUTER SCIENCE, Venice, Italy, November 21-23, 2007 322