What is an M-Business channel?

In its most basic form, an M-Business channel is just another Web site.

There is more to it than that, of course. An M-Business channel page does not contain all the bells and whistles you might see on, say, a Web page in Internet Explorer 5.x. But if you know how to create a Web page, you can make yourself an M-Business channel.

As a simple introduction, look at what happens when you subscribe to (and subsequently download) an M-Business channel. Some elements have been simplified for the sake of brevity, but you will get a basic understanding of the process.

Open up and configure an account on the M-Business Sync Server. This account contains certain relevant information: your user name and password, what channels you want to subscribe to, and so on.

After that, you install the software necessary to view M-Business channel. This includes:

  • M-Business Client. This is a Web browser (and a mini Web server) that is installed on your Palm OS, Window Mobile Pocket PC 2003, Win32, Windows Mobile 5 or 6, Microsoft Smartphone, or Symbian OS device. Some information about your account is also stored here.

  • M-Business Connect. This is installed on your desktop computer. It is the software that enables you to connect to your M-Business Sync Server whenever you synchronize your device.

    Software necessary to view M-Business channel

    When you synchronize your mobile device, Mobile Link will take over and connect to your M-Business Sync Server. Your M-Business Sync Server, after looking up what channels you are subscribed to, will download those pages from sites on the Internet. In many cases, these sites are distinct areas that contain pages optimized specifically for M-Business channels.

    Synchronization request

    Your M-Business Sync Server downloads all these pages and performs some pre-processing on them. This includes shrinking images too large for the mobile device's screen, discarding pieces that cannot be used by M-Business Client (such as Java applets) and compressing the rest of the HTML.

    Synchronization response to desktop

    Once that is done, these pages are uploaded to your mobile device, and M-Business Connect disconnects. All the pages from a channel are uploaded at once, so that you can view the entire channel without having to reconnect to the Internet.

    Synchronization response to relayed to mobile device

At this point, you can take your mobile device with you and browse the channel at your leisure. A mini Web server runs on the device and displays pages whenever you click a link, and the M-Business Client browser reads and formats the pages just like any other HTML browser.

Unlike most other browsers, M-Business Client allows you to submit forms while you are offline, and continue browsing (or submitting more forms), without having to wait for a response from a server.

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