Knock out your mobile development deadlines with IBM Worklight

Have you been asked to deliver new functionality or a new application with an impossible deadline? How about deliver a fully featured and integrated mobile application for multiple platforms in five weeks? Yes, I know that is a ridiculous timeline. However, is it possible? With the help of an IBM Premier Business Partner (Avnet Technology Solutions) and IBM Worklight, we were able to deliver an application on time and on budget.

How is that even possible?

In a recent blog post, “ IBM Worklight to the rescue: Saving your company's reputation,” I discussed how the remote disable function of IBM Worklight could provide significant value to a company that needed to deny access to a specific version of their application. I recently completed a mobile application project with an IBM client that was successful in part because of the remote disable and direct update features of IBM Worklight.

So what did we really deliver?

We delivered a hybrid application built using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS that would be approved by and available in iOS and Android app stores with custom phone and tablet versions. The application was tested on multiple devices, operating systems and form factors. I won’t bore you with all of the details, but here is a high-level list of the functional requirements that were delivered.

• Push notifications
• Remote database integration for lead and data collection
• Device calendar integration (add events to personal calendars)
• Custom Twitter integration
• Custom RSS feed
• Worklight analytics 

How did Worklight help make this possible?

We were able to ensure that this project was delivered as promised with several easy-to-use features that are included with IBM Worklight:

• Adapters– secure integration with remote resources
• Automated mobile functional testing– same test runs across multiple devices and mobile operating systems
• Unified push notification APIs– polled server-side apps to dispatch notifications, uniform access to push notification providers and the ability to monitor and control notification delivery
• Direct update– web resources pushed to app when application connects to the Worklight Server

The application used SQL and HTTP adapters to store customer information and to insert push notification messages into a database that was polled regularly. When a new entry was found in the push notification table, the polling process would create and send a new push notification through the unified push notification APIs. The direct update feature was used after the basic application structure had been created and accepted by the app stores. We finished the basic application structure, and it was accepted in the app stores about three weeks into the project. This provided the team with two weeks to make content changes and correct any defects that were found during testing.

In the end, the project was successful and the application was very well received by its users.

By: Drew Douglass
Link: http://asmarterplanet.com/mobile-enterprise/blog/2014/02/knock-mobile-development-deadlines-ibm-worklight.html