BONDI Feedback Enterprise
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About this wiki page
This wiki page is one of several wiki pages that OpenAjax Alliance will use to collect feedback from its members via its wiki about the BONDI 1.0 Release Candidate specifications. The key review period goes from 'Feb. 12-25, 2009. See BONDI for more information about this BONDI review and feedback initiative. The full set of wiki pages is as follows:
- BONDI - Main wiki page
- BONDI Feedback APIs - Feedback page relative to the general approaches that OMTP is using for its APIs. Are the APIs understandable, familiar in approach, and convenient to JavaScript developers?
- BONDI Feedback Security - Feedback page relative to the security features in BONDI. Is the design robust? Are there any security holes? Are the security features easy enough to use?
- BONDI Feedback Enterprise - Enter any detailed spec errors on this wiki
- BONDI Evangelism - Possible ways that OpenAjax Alliance might be able to help evangelize BONDI
- BONDI V2 Wishlist - OMTP will start discussion about future versions of BONDI in March 2009. This wiki page collects any feature requests from OpenAjax members.
- BONDI History - Quick introduction of historical activities leading up to BONDI initiative
BONDI Feedback: Enterprise
Introduction
This wiki page contains feedback from members of OpenAjax Alliance on Enterprise requirements for BONDI.
Feedback from IBM/Lotus
(Background: Jon Ferraiolo interviewed people involved in mobile platform platform support within IBM's Lotus division and receiving the following feedback)
Target platforms
Browsers vs widgets:
- The Lotus mobile team was very much aware that mobile phones support browsing, but were generally not aware that widgets might be a future option for delivering mobile enterprise front-ends.
- After introducing mobile widgets, there was recognition that mobile widgets (e.g., using W3C Widgets or a technology such as PhoneGap) could address some key limitations found in browser-based applications, such as network time to download the HTML+JS for the application, integrations with device APIs, and local data persistence.
Browsers of interest (not necessarily ordered):
- WebKit/Safari
- Mobile Firefox (Fennec) to address accessibility requirements
- Windows Mobile using IE
Devices of interest (roughly in order of interest level):
- iPhone
- Nokia
- Android
- Blackberry
- Windows Mobile
Desired Features
Here are features that are in BONDI that are of most interest:
- Location
- Calendar integration
- Address book integration
- SMS
- Alarms
- Ability to launch a map
Here are features that they don't see in BONDI that are highly desirable in mobile device APIs:
- Built-in iCal and vCard support
- Find entries that start with a pattern (to prevent having to do this in software, which might be slow and drain the battery)
- Integration/differentiation between corporate and personal PIM, particularly calendar. (Different data stores, but ability to combine views.)
- Security features: Phones can be stolen and generally don't have the option for encrypted, password-protected disk drives. For both browser-based mobile apps and widget-based mobile apps, there is a concern about unencrypted sensitive data being retained in device data stores and in cache files. One useful feature would be the ability to password-lock and encrypt data stores and the include an ability to scrub any caches on logoff.
- Easy/fast ability to wipe out data stores (e.g., PIM storage areas) and replace with new data sent from server.
- Easy/fast ability to sync local data stores with server data stores, such as what is available via SyncML
- Notebook and memo pad features
- Timer that can cause a notice to appear to the user, from which the user could open an application
- Server-connectivity services where a server-sent event can cause a notice to appear to the user, from which the user could open an application
- SMS message can cause a notice to appear to the user, from which the user could open an application
- Ability to provide custom phone number patterns within Web pages. (Today, devices only support a particular set of built-in phone number patterns)
- Someone (maybe not BONDI) should standardized the 'tel:' and 'maps:' protocols found on iPhone so that they are industry standards
Time to usability concerns
One general concern with mobile application is speed (and ease of use) by which the user is able to install (if applicable) and use the software. If setup is complicated, users won't use the sofware.
Enterprise software usually has various levels of security. Users often must be authenticated (e.g., login/password) and then authorized before they can use the software.
The question is: what's the complete workflow to run a mobile enterprise application for the first time, and what's the workflow when running it subsequently? Assume a widget. Does the widget launch a web session with the server whenever the session has expired to bring up a server-delivered login/password dialog? How difficult are these things to type? If there are long network delays or many clumsy steps, users won't use the software.
The Lotus team was wondering if BONDI offered some standard approaches to address these workflows that will be common across multiple different applications and multiple different platforms.
