Product Workflow

Use Unwired Platform to develop mobile applications, and to manage the production environment. Understanding the end-to-end product workflow enables you to use Unwired Platform strategically in your enterprise.

Developers Use the Unwired WorkSpace Eclipse Edition and Visual Studio Edition to develop mobile applications. The developer's license includes everything necessary to develop and test your creations—access to sample or external data sources, access to both the Eclipse and Visual Studio Editions development environments, API classes, Unwired Server, and Afaria. The basic steps for creating a mobile application include:

Create a connection profile to a structured or unstructured data source.
Create a connection profile to Unwired Server.
Create mobile applications, which include one or more mobile business objects and a device application:
1. Create mobile business objects.
  Use Unwired WorkSpace to create a project container, then create one or more mobile business objects (MBOs). Mobile business objects contain the business logic, operations (create, update, delete, and other), attributes, and relationships for the mobile application. For example, an MBO may include the business logic for creating, editing, and deleting customer records. You can create an MBO by dragging and dropping an object from the data source, or using the creation wizard and then bind the MBO to a data source (or you can create an MBO and defer binding to a data source).
2. Create a device application, which is the user interface that runs on a mobile device.
  - Eclipse Edition – use the Device Application Designer to develop a device application using the graphical user interface, drag-and-drop, and stock screens.
  - Visual Studio Edition – use Visual Studio Form Designer to develop a device application, or use the Unwired WorkSpace client object API to customize the .NET client.
  In either case, identify synchronization keys, set up personalization, implement error handling, and test the mobile application on an emulator. Automatically generate the device application code to complete the mobile application.
Deploy the mobile application from the development environment to Unwired Server, and the device application to an emulator or mobile device.

Note: If you plan to use Afaria to deploy files to mobile devices, use Afaria development tools to develop an Afaria client.

System Administrators Use the Sybase Control Center administrative console, a Web-based user interface to deploy mobile applications from Unwired Server to the production environment, and to manage the runtime production environment. Multiple users can use the administrative console. Steps for deploying the mobile application in a production environment include:

Package the mobile application for deployment.
Create a mobile application package on the Unwired Server. Configure MBO server-side parameters, set up personalization, and perform role mapping for the production environment.
Deploy the mobile application package.
Once configured, deploy the mobile application package on Unwired Server. Once deployed, users can access the mobile application from mobile devices. Mobile applications can be pushed to the device or scheduled for deployment. Unwired Server manages synchronization between the data source and the mobile device.

Mobile Device Users Use mobile devices (including smartphones, laptops, handheld devices, and notebooks) to access mobile applications.

From the mobile device, log in to the mobile application; navigate the user interface; synchronize data and applications through Unwired Server to the data source; and create, update, and delete data records and transactions.