Russell Beattie

I use the Orion Server for this site. I've been using it for years on my server boxes because it's fast as hell (I don't need Apache in front of it), stable as a rock and all around just rules. And as you probably know, Oracle thought the same of Orion and licensed the technology for their Oracle 9i Application Server (9iAS).

This is why this bit of news is neat to see:

ORACLE9i APPLICATION SERVER SET TO DELIVER FIRST UNIFIED PLATFORM FOR WIRELESS APPLICATIONS

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), the world�s largest enterprise software company, today announced new wireless features in Oracle9i Application Server that will make it the first and only integrated application server to support XHTML 2.0, the new W3C standard. The new wireless features, scheduled to be available in a new Wireless Toolkit on the Oracle� Technology Network, are designed to make it easier and more cost-effective for developers to build and deploy mobile technologies across the enterprise. In addition to supporting XHTML 2.0, Oracle9i Application Server will also provide a single, unified platform for J2ME and Multi-Media Messaging (MMS) development models.

* Enhanced Multi-Channel Support with XHTML

* A Complete Web Services Infrastructure for J2ME

* Enriched Content with MMS

* New Tools and Resources On Mobile Development Center:

The enhanced Wireless Toolkit, scheduled to be available via the new Mobile Development Center on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN), will provide wireless code samples, documentation and Software Development Kits (SDKs) to help developers build and deploy multi-channel XHTML, J2ME and messaging applications. The new XHTML SDK will offer a standards-based model for creating multi-channel applications, while the new J2ME Web services SDK will simplify the development and deployment process of Web services to J2ME devices. With approximately 10,000 visitors per month, the Mobile Development Center on OTN also provides a hosted instance of Oracle9i Application Server, allowing developers to build and test their wireless applications online.

Now I have to admit it's mostly fluff, but I like how Oracle is aiming to wrap up their app server aimed to Mobile platforms. They're going to have a hell of a time competing with Nokia and Ericsson's systems... they've supposedly cut sweetheart deals with operators providing both the back-end infrastructure as well as the handsets and now are a serious force. These two companies have like 70% of the MMSC market right now for example. But I'm pretty sure that Nokia's middleware apps are written in Java, so maybe 9iAS would be a good platform for it to run on. It'd be great to see Oracle make some headway against IBM and BEA. They've got a good product at a better pricepoint than those other two.

Here's a link to Oracle's Mobile Dev Center. I'm not really sure what's there just yet, but it looks interesting. I also saw on the front page of the OTN site an overview of SyncML. I need to check out that site more often.

Hey! My first post combining Mobile technology with Server Side Java. Cool!

-Russ