Professional BlackBerry [Paperback]

Craig J. Johnston (Author), Richard Evers (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764589539 | ISBN-13: 978-0764589539 | Publication Date: July 29, 2005 | Edition: 1

• BlackBerrys enable users to stay connected with wireless access to e-mail, calendars, and corporate data; they have a phone and a Web browser in addition to other wireless features
• Written by a BlackBerry insider with assistance from Research in Motion, this book covers support topics ranging from setting up BlackBerry pilot programs to developing applications that let BlackBerry users access corporate data and systems remotely
• Key topics include how to deploy BlackBerrys within the organization, how to create push applications to extend the functionality of BlackBerrys, and how to implement new features of the latest BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 4.0
• Details rolling out BlackBerrys to users in an easy and controlled manner, planning for disaster recovery, and developing Web-based applications using mobile Web technology

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Professional BlackBerry

Enabling users to stay connected with wireless access to calendars, corporate data, real-time e-mail, and a phone, BlackBerry devices have experienced an explosion in popularity. Many would argue that they have become a business necessity. In the first book to deal with the support and development of BlackBerry devices, authors Johnston and Evers cover everything from how the BlackBerry infrastructure works and the various components that make up its environment to installing a BlackBerry server and maintaining your BlackBerry environment.

You'll discover the different ways in which you can extend the functionality of the BlackBerry (versions 4.0, 3.6, and 2.2), how to roll out BlackBerry devices to your users, and how to create a BlackBerry intranet portal. Ultimately, though, you'll see how developing the BlackBerry platform further can result in a happier and more productive user community.

What you will learn from this book

• How to plan disaster-recovery scenarios to provide the maximum uptime for users
• How to take ideas learned in the book and apply them to your BlackBerry environment with the help of the sample scripts included
• The components that that make up the BlackBerry infrastructure and how they all work together
• How the Plazmic Media Engine allows the BlackBerry to display rich Web content while keeping the size of that content small
• Ways to create an internal BlackBerry portal and how to enhance it with a BlackBerry channel

Who this book is for

This book is for those who support and maintain the BlackBerry environment within their company or who conduct internal development within an organization.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Craig James Johnston of East Windsor, New Jersey, has more than 15 years of networking experience, most recently with the BlackBerry. He has done proof-of-concept BlackBerry projects and has actively supported BlackBerry devices in a Lotus Domino environment since 2000. His extensive knowledge of networking, hardware, and wireless technologies is coupled with writing and technical instruction.

Richard Evers of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is the editor of the BlackBerry Developer Journal. He is an expert in the areas of wireless communication and small-footprint application development. He has more than 25 years’ experience designing and developing commercial and custom applications. He has been editor and publisher of numerous publications, including Transactor magazine. He creates and publishes educational Web sites, and he develops customized Web software (including search engines, custom proxy servers, and browsers).

Product Details

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (July 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764589539
• ISBN-13: 978-0764589539
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,091,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BlackBerry Developer, November 11, 2005

By 

Robert Kao "Robert Kao" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional BlackBerry (Paperback)

"BlackBerry Professional" caters to BlackBerry system administrators, application programmers, and BlackBerry web developers.

If you are a BlackBerry system administrator, regardless of size of your corporation, "BlackBerry Professional" does a good job walking you through deploying BlackBerries to people in a corporate organization. The book points out potential pitfalls so that you don't make the common mistakes that others would make.

As an experienced BlackBerry developer, I suggest this book as a must read for those who just started programming the BlackBerry. As any BlackBerry developer knows, in order to master the BlackBerry programming arena, one must first understand the BlackBerry infrastructure, because no matter what type of applications you maybe writing, sooner or later, the BlackBerry application has to interact with the BlackBerry infrastructure. "BlackBerry Professional" also goes over some of the hidden tools of Java Development Environment (JDE), the BlackBerry IDE from RIM, and help you write better BlackBerry applications. "BlackBerry Professional" gives you a good grasp of the development tool along with the BlackBerry infrastructure.

In addition, if you are interested in the BlackBerry web programming, this book also gives good primer on how to structure your website to "fit" a BlackBerry screen.
Furthermore, "BlackBerry Professional" also touches on developing Flash-like web animation, using Plasmic CDK, for the BlackBerry.

This is definitely one that will stay off your bookshelf and be on your desk for frequent usage.

Other stuff I recommend:
- BlackBerry for Dummies - BlackBerry user book
- BlackBerry Journal - http://www.blackberry.com/developers/journal/index.shtml
- BlackBerry Goodies - http://www.blackberryGoodies.com/

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Professional BlackBerry, October 12, 2005

By 

Jay Collins (Waterloo, ON) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional BlackBerry (Paperback)

This is NOT "BlackBerry For Dummies". As stated in the introduction, the target audience for this book are software developers and IT staff who are interested or involved in developing for the burgeoning handheld market. The authors claim that to "provide enough information in each chapter to allow all technically savvy readers to follow along and understand the concepts." They succeed admirably. To avoid a false sense of security in some readers, it might have been a good idea to provide a "what you should know before reading this chapter", but the reader has been fairly warned.

The book is divided into two parts, consisting of a total of 14 chapters and 6 appendices. Each chapter covers a separate aspect of the BlackBerry development and support environment. The first 5 chapters briefly but clearly cover the BlackBerry system architecture, installation, deployment and upgrade procedures. While these chapters are necessarily short and are obviously meant as supplements to the product documentation, the reader is left with the feeling that he has had a peek behind the scenes and has been given many valuable tips towards anticipating, resolving or avoiding potentially troublesome areas.

Chapters 6 through 8 comprise the remainder of Part I and cover monitoring, managing and in general enhancing the user experience. Chapter 7 covers much of the less obvious material needed to consistently set up new corporate users. Chapter 8 in particular covers disaster-recovery planning, an often overlooked activity. The advice in this section is simple and direct, but assumes that the reader is already very familiar with their Lotus Domino or Windows BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) environment.

Part II is aimed squarely at developers, and the area where the book really delivers. While much of the material in the rest of the book could presumably be obtained from RIM tech support or as part of proprietary training courses, this section dispels any sense of mystery regarding developing for this platform by providing variations of a sample (and very typical) custom application. These chapters give a good overview of MDS (Mobile Data Services), Web portals, and the BlackBerry Channel. Developers are walked through examples of using the handheld simulators, developing BlackBerry push channel and Java J2ME applications, managing cache content and of using the Plazmic Media Engine (PME) and the PME Content Developer's Kit (CDK).

The Plazmic Media Engine uses vector graphics rather than bitmaps for images and animation to reduce memory requirements and produce better quality graphics than one would otherwise expect on small-screen devices. In addition, the PME can be used to create audio content for a rich Web user experience.

This introduction to the PME covers all of the relevant content design considerations, such as dealing with the varying screen sizes, color depth, fonts, etc. The content created with Plazmic and deployed with the Composer or SVG Transcoding Utility (used to produce compressed distribution binaries) can be used across multiple mobile platforms. The sample code is available for downloading from the publisher.

The first 2 of 6 appendices provide a WML (Wireless Markup Language) and WMLScript reference. The remaining 4 are worth the price of the book to developers, as the development guides and coding tips (reprints from the in-house RIM BlackBerry Developer Journal) provide valuable help in avoiding the pitfalls of developing for the handheld environment. Combined with the sample code noted above, these provide an excellent quick-start guide to developing BlackBerry applications.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Valuable but "thin", July 14, 2006

By 

J. P. Mens (Germany, Europe) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional BlackBerry (Paperback)

Professional BlackBerry by Craig James Johnston & Richard Evers covers sundry facets of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), deployment of BlackBerry devices as well as BlackBerry-application development. As such it is targeted at system administrators and developers. Having been published in 2005, Professional BlackBerry is of course only current up to version 4.0 of the enterprise software.

After describing the BES system architecture, the authors go into planning the first installation and deployment of the desktop software. Monitoring the BlackBerry environment and user management are followed by an interesting overview of desaster-recovery planning.

Part II is for developers and describes the MDS and its simulators. Pushing content to BlackBerrys is then followed by developing Java applications and The Plazmic Media Engine.

All in all, the book is valuable for the systems administrator or the developers planning to deploy a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, although I found the book is a bit "thin"; I'd have expected more in-depth information on the data flow between a BES and the device itself, as well as some insight to the internal structure of a BES server (configuration, databases, etc.). There is very little information about the myriad settings which can be deployed to devices, and the administration topics are a bit lacking as well. Be it coincidental or not, the WML examples in the development chapter look familiar to the ones in the BlackBerry Developer Journal and are by the same author. Are there no other examples to build upon?