Automate Your J2ME Application Porting with Preprocessing
Got porting nightmares? If you're considering automating the porting your J2ME applications, you may want to think about using a preprocessor. Find out why it's the only technique open-ended enough to handle porting to multiple device models.
by Bruno Delb
October 3, 2006
ecause Java is theoretically portable, people assume that when you develop a Java mobile application, it should run correctly on all Java-enabled devices. Like most things theoretical, this just doesn't work in the real world. During the short life of J2ME mobile applications, many developers have expressed concerns that interoperability problems are not going to be solved so easily by new initiatives like MIDP 2.0 or JTWI.
The reality is that J2ME may be globally portable but J2ME applications are not. This means that byte-code runs correctly on all Java handsets but the behavior of an application must be adapted for almost each handset. There are 1200 mobile devices, all of which have different capabilities, support various Java platforms—including MIDP, and support optional APIs and optional parts of APIs. Not to mention that each of these implementations has its own unique set of bugs (click here to see a demonstration of this fragmentation of device characteristics and features).
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ecause Java is theoretically portable, people assume that when you develop a Java mobile application, it should run correctly on all Java-enabled devices. Like most things theoretical, this just doesn't work in the real world. During the short life of J2ME mobile applications, many developers have expressed concerns that interoperability problems are not going to be solved so easily by new initiatives like MIDP 2.0 or JTWI.
