Mobile map - Technology for Application

Aymen A.Solyman
Deutsche Gesellschaft Fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit(GTZ)
admin@cairolocator.com


Introduction
Information technology is rapidly changing the use of Geographic Information Systems (GISs) from the classic desktop applications into the business service market. With the ubiquitous computing, the settings change dramatically and the classic GIS market will change drastically in the coming few years.

Till mid 90’s, the architecture of GIS focused on a standalone (static) environment. This architecture has been changed to move GIS applications from workstations into mobile GIS applications.

Mobile map applications is not a conventional GIS modified to operate on mobile devices,but a system build using a fundamentally new paradigm(Maguire,2001).

In this paper, we will discuss the integration of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) to build a mobile map application running on 2.5G and 3G mobile devices such as Nokia series 60.

The Characteristics of the Mobile Market
It is important to look at the mobile market in isolation. It has specific needs that make it unlike markets for PCs or fixed domestic appliances. Five key characteristics that make it unique,according to Symbian OS perspective, these characteristics are:

  1. Mobile phones are both small and mobile.
  2. Mobile phones are ubiquitous-they target a mass market of consumer,enterprise and profissional users.
  3. Mobile phones are occasionally connected,they can be used when connected to the wireless phone network,locally to other devices or on their own.
  4. The need to differentiate the products in order to innovate and compete in a fast evolving market.
  5. The development platform is open to enable independent technology to develop third party applications and services.
Available Knowledge and Tools
In the past years,developers of GIS applications have to rely on the programming languages and tools that were supplied by the GIS vendors.Moving GIS to the mobile technology is a big challange, taking into consideration the special characteristics of the spatial data.

Combination of XML and J2ME introduces a powerful tool for serving spatial data on mobile devices. Using XML-based data format provides an object-based data format in which each feature can be defined as an object or set of objects, independent from other features. Storing spatial data in XML formats reduces the storage size of the data and improves the performance of the application.

Developing in J2ME provides flexibility to adapt many different platforms. Object-based data formats supply a spatially suited data format.

Understanding Mobile Map Applications
To understand the mobile map application , we need to understand what is an "Application". An end-user application consists of the following components(refer to figure 1):

  1. A user interface (UI) where user gestures are applied and interpreted as actions.
  2. Application logic which recieves the actions and may request application data from a repository.
  3. A data repository (both spatial and tabular data).

Figure (1):Typical end user mobile map applications



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