Petr Panteleyev's Blog

Optional Packages in phoneME Advanced

Optional package is a set of technology-specific APIs. It's called 'optional' because a particular device may not support some technology and thus the corresponding API is not provided by Java ME on that device.

Historically, almost all existing Java ME optional packages were developed with MIDP and CLDC in mind. So, all of them depend on MIDP API and have MIDP centric architecture. This way they are present now in the phoneME Feature code base.

At the same time there is phoneME Advanced project. It has CDC based architecture targeting advanced phone segment of the market. CDC world provide much more API-rich profiles and also introduces several application models like Xlet and 'main'.

We are targeting two primary goals:

• Utilize all new powerful features of "advanced phone" devices.
• Facilitate smooth transition of the existing application base between "feature phone" and "advanced phone" devices.

To make those goals achievable we are now working on the new architecture for the optional packages with the following requirements:

1. Architecture should be unified between different platforms, application models and device types:
   • phoneME Feature / phomeME Advanced
   • MIDlet/Xlet
   • real device / emulation
2. Code reuse between different implementation should be as much as possible
3. Specific parts of the implementation should be optimized for the corresponding platform.

In this blog I plan to cover various aspects of this new architecture and our progress with optional packages.

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