Enterprise J2ME Developing Mobile Java Applications [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 12. Mobile Databases for MIDP Devices

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

PointBase Micro Edition

The Oracle J2ME SODA SDK

The IBM DB2e FastRecordStore

On MIDP devices, full relational databases prove to be too expensive. The standard MIDP does not even support basic SQL types such as the Float type. On the other hand, the standard persistent storage facility (i.e., the RMS) on the MIDP is terribly inadequate for enterprise applications. RMS stores are very slow. They are neither indexable nor searchable. RMS's linear structure makes it a pain to handle relational or object data.

To address this problem, database vendors have developed simple database solutions on top of the RMS. Since those databases are extremely lightweight, full support for the JDBC API is not necessary. Each vendor provides its lightweight proprietary access APIs. In this chapter, we discuss those solutions and APIs.

Note

Database applications on the MIDP are in demand. After all, most corporate PDAs today run the Palm OS, which only officially supports the MIDP as of this writing. In the future, Palm OS devices will run the combination of the MIDP and the PDA optional package, which supports file system operations.