Using IBM Worklight for server-side mobile application development (i)

Integration of IBM Worklight adapters with Java business logic

Brief introduction

IBM Rational application Developer for WebSphere Software Version 8.5.1 iFix1 facilitates Java, Java Enterprise Edition (JEE), Web 2.0. Rapid development, testing, and operational deployment of mobile, OSGi, portal, and service-oriented architecture (SOA) business applications. For mobile application development, it contains some productivity features that deal with HTML 5, CSS3, JavaScript, Dojo Toolkit, and JavaScript Object notation (JSON) programming structures. It also seamlessly integrates the IBM WebSphere application Server programming model and the supported Run-time environment.

The IBM Worklight platform facilitates rapid development, testing, and delivery of mobile applications across Android, IOS, BlackBerrys, and Microsoft Windows Metro mobile operating systems in a platform-independent, vendor-agnostic manner. It contains the following components:

Worklight application Center is used as an enterprise application store to keep mobile applications and share mobile applications across the organization's architects, developers, testers, and users.

The Worklight Console uses the browser user interface to manage mobile applications and adapters.

Worklight Server is used to test and deploy the development of mobile applications.

Worklight Device Runtime Layer is running on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Worklight Studio is used to develop native, mixed, and standard WEB mobile applications. It supports the flexibility to develop mobile applications that meet tailored conditions, including native, mixed, or WEB programming models. It also supports the development of server-side mobile components, which are typically deployed on top of the worklight server, in any supported IBM WebSphere Application Server configuration file (Liberty, Base, and network Deploy ment) on the run.

In this article, you will learn how to use the Rational application Developer for WebSphere 8.5.1 iFix1 Developer Workbench to develop and test a Java application. You will then learn how to develop and test a mobile application that contains a server-side adapter component that uses a previously developed Java application. The IBM worklight Framework supports the development of server-side components to invoke business logic encapsulated in Java, Web services, REST services, and Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) components.

Use case architecture

In this example based on fictitious customer requirements, you need to develop a Java application using the Rational application Developer for WebSphere Workbench and test this in the WebSphere application Server 8.5.0.2 the application running on the Run-time instance. Customer demand calls for the development and deployment of applications to be extended to smartphones and tablets, leveraging developed or deployed business logic, rather than re-inventing ("eliminate and replace") by extending and transforming policies. These requirements define two concepts labeled UseCase and usecases:

UseCase This is an encapsulation of the necessary mobile application features, representing the client, server, and middleware aspects of the application. The lines in Figure 1 represent the usecase concept.

Usecases These are encapsulation of a collection of possible use cases or concepts. Figure 1 shows the 9 possible combinations of usecase instances. This table represents the Usecases concept in this article.

Figure 1. Encapsulation of usecase and usecases requirements

In your Java application, two interfaces are defined to capture customer requirements: One represents the UseCase concept and the other represents the usecases concept. You define the implementation of these two interfaces and also define an additional class to catch any type of exception or error that your logic might encounter. Table 1 summarizes the Java application development artifacts that you plan to develop in Rational application Developer and then deploy and test on the WebSphere application Server.