Blackberry applet to communicate with back-office server

Question

We use a back-office accounting system with an SQL db2 database. Our sales, service and management all have Blackberries. I have started to write some HTML web scripts that go through BES sever so staff can access and update data (sales summaries, late orders, AR approvals).

The next level seems to be using the native blackberry applets to manage data. For instance we could use an application that notifies head of A/R when a substancial order is being prepared for a customer who is behind in payments. This would require a form of push notification (message and/or email) from server, an entry in Blackberry database, a screen to view list of unapproved orders, a way to approve/reject orders that would update local database and backoffice server.

Questions

• what language? Java J2ME with blackberry classes seem most obvious, but is there any viable rapid development tools on this platform?

• what database on Blackberry? Is there a choice?

• what is appropriate technology to push and pull data (sockets, http?)

• can we hire a regular Java guy with a year or two exp, or do we need a Blackberry specialist

• is synchronizing data an issue. If blackberry is out of range, will missing messages be synchronized automatically or do you have to control this programically?

thank you

Answer 1

1. Blackberry apps are Java using a proprietary API. It's derived from J2ME but you have to use the BB APIs in order to do anything interesting. A lot of BB developers use the Eclipse plugin. Compared to Android and iPhone BB dev is a bit clunky.

2. BB's running OS 5 and higher have SQLite on the device. All devices have a "Persistent Store". The store gives you broad support if your users have older devices. Now of course on your backend you can use whatever database you want :)

3. BB's can do http, sockets, wifi (depending on the device). Things like carrier-tcp can be unreliable on older devices and with certain carriers. However since you have a BES, you can use the MDS service which tends to be reliable (provided the BES is running). You can also get notified from push messages which are sent to the BES. This is useful for low-latency.

4. I guess most people can learn this, but I recommend finding someone with specific BB knowledge. In my experience I've found the platform pretty tricky to do things well. I've had to experiment a lot to get things working.

5. Push messages are 'fire and forgot' but there is a 'reliable push' mechanism I haven't used. In general wireless apps have to be good about not depending on network reliability.