Android - Enterprise Mobile Apps

[Joe San]

Hi Mark,

I would like to know if there would be something similiar to Enterprise applications with respect to mobile development. I just saw from the Andriod reference materials that we can make RPC calls. So is that a sign that in the future Enterprise Mobile Applications might be a reality? Does your book touches on such things if they make sense?

[Mark L. Murphy]

I would like to know if there would be something similiar to Enterprise applications with respect to mobile development.

You would need to be a bit more specific before I could provide an answer to that question.

I just saw from the Andriod reference materials that we can make RPC calls.

Ummmm...

There is an on-device RPC mechanism for the purposes of having one application talk to another. There are two HTTP APIs on-device (UrlConnection and Apache's HttpClient). However, there is no SOAP or XML-RPC stack built into Android, if that is what you are seeking.

Does your book touches on such things if they make sense?

The current roster of books cover things built into Android, with little coverage of third-party libraries. That may change in time.

[Joe San]

Thanks for the reply!

My first question was can we build Enterprise mobile applications using Android, somthing similiar to we do using J2EE?

[Fred Grott]

Are you referring to web services?

Jothi Shankar Kumar wrote:Thanks for the reply!

My first question was can we build Enterprise mobile applications using Android, somthing similiar to we do using J2EE?

[Joe San]

Ja, kind of!

[Ed Burnette]

Calling web services is definitely supported in Android clients. There's an example program that calls the Google Translation web service in my book, and an advanced version of that program is available on the Android Market.

I'd suggest avoiding SOAP if you can, and stick with REST-ful services, perhaps with JSON. But if you can't avoid SOAP I found this thread from a guy who got kSOAP working with Android: Calling SOAP 1.1. Web Services from Android (ksoap2 + apache http)

[Fred Grott]

There is alos an OAUTH java library for Android.