Sybase Unwired Platform supports two mobile business object-based application types: native application and Hybrid Web Container-based mobile workflow.
The native application model enables the developer to write custom code (C#, Java, or Objective-C, depending on the platform) to create a device application. In native application development, the application is based on compiled code that is specific to a particular mobile operating system. Native application development provides the most flexibility in terms of leveraging the device services, but each application must be provisioned individually after being compiled, even for minor changes or updates. Native applications support offline capabilities, leveraging synchronization.
The Hybrid Web Container offers a fast and simple way to build applications that support business processes, such as approvals and requests. With the Hybrid Web Container-based development, the server-side of the application is metadata-driven and the client-side of the application is a fully generated Web application package. This mobile workflow package of platform-independent HTML, JavaScript and CSS resources can be deployed automatically to the Container, a native application on the device, without writing any code. The Hybrid Web Container hosts an embedded browser and launches the individual mobile workflow applications. The workflows are assigned to users by administrators. Once assigned, those workflows can be initiated by the user (client-initiated) or automatically triggered as a result of a back-end event that is sent to the Unwired Server as a data change notification request (server-initiated).