This week Monday and Tuesday I attended a workshop in which Sybase presented the new version 1.2 of the Sybase Unwired Platform. Coming from SAP NetWeaver Mobile, I have to say that I'm very surprised - the Unwired Platform rocks!

The great thing is the openness of the platform. You can develop applications either with Eclipse (and a Sybase PlugIn) or with the Visual Studio (again with a Sybase PlugIn). It is possible to easily model MBOs (Mobile Business Objects; something like SyncBOs in the “old” SAP Mobile Infrastructure world) from database tables, WebServices or SAP function modules/BAPIs. The MBOs are displayed in an editor that reminds me of a UML tool. Using this tool you can model the relationships between the MBOs and you can add the typical CRUD operations to them: Create, Read, Update and Delete.

These MBOs are deployed on the mobile middleware and they are the basis for the mobile client. Once you have done the deployment, you can create a Mobile application. Now this is really cool: You just drag and drop MBOs on an empty canvas and the dev tool creates all required screens for you: A list view, a detail page, an edit dialog and all the required menu items and all the required linking. You’re done and ready to deploy the application either on Blackberry or Windows Mobile devices. Now I did all this in Eclipse and Visual Studio - as a Java developer I favor of course Eclipse (that should not be any surprise to people who know me).



Now the application only contains standard screens, but it is fully functional. The next step is to customize the UI. That can be done with a UI editor in Eclipse: You can add additional menu items; you can add UI elements and so on (all the typical stuff you would expect from a WYSIWYG editor). But you don’t need to use the Sybase UI editor – you could also code it directly if you want.



The really great thing is: Up to this stage you can create the application completely in Eclipse and deploy it as .NET solution on Windows Mobile. Now when you want to add business logic and create a Win Mobile solution, you have to move to Visual Studio to add C# code. The Blackberry solutions are completely built inside Eclipse in Java.

Another great thing is that you can add additional screens like configuration and login dialogs by just dragging and dropping them into the solution – Sybase provides templates for these types of screens.

The code generation is template driven - at the moment it is not possible to edit or customize these templates, but maybe it will be in the future.



I like the fact that Sybase paid attention to the small things: The SUP comes with a Windows application, that is a full SUP client – after you deployed the MBOs, you can synchronize data with it, you can display it, edit it and even test the data push from the server to the client.

The SUP middleware comes with an administration application, in which you can look at the connected devices, the MBOs, the push rules and other things. If you don’t like this Adobe Flash based UI – no problem: The server offers APIs to all of the admin functionality – this way you can create your own administration application and deploy it into the internal servlet container.

So what is the difference between this and SAP’s NetWeaver Mobile?

• Well, with the built in Afaria support, the deployment and administration of the mobile landscape will be a lot easier. NetWeaver Mobile was limited in this area.
• The development tools look a lot better than the ones provided by SAP.
• The platform is more open: You can do nearly everything.
• You can not only develop solutions for Windows Mobile Professional, but also for Windows SmartPhones, Blackberries and soon the iPhone and Symbian.
• You can integrate non-SAP systems. Of course this was possible with NW Mobile as well, but here it is a lot easier.
• The SUP platform is push enabled - something NetWeaver Mobile is still missing.
• You have to deal with non-SAP software; this is not a big issue for some customers, but for others this is a no-go.
• You need an additional Sybase middleware server – if you run NetWeaver Mobile 7.0, you have the middleware already built into your ERP system. Additional software means additional administrative overhead.

I have a very good first impression of the unwired platform – now it needs to prove itself in a real live project and in a productive environment.