Professional WAP (Programmer to Programmer) [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Charles Arehart (Author), Nirmal Chidambaram (Author), Shashikiran Guruprasad (Author), Alex Homer (Author), Ric Howell (Author), Stephan Kasippillai (Author), Rob Machin (Author), Tom Myers (Author), Alexander Nakhimovsky (Author), Luca Passani (Author), Chris Pedley (Author), Richard Taylor (Author), Marco Toschi (Author)

Book Description

Series: Programmer to Programmer | Publication Date: July 27, 2000

The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) provides a universal open standard for bringing Internet content and advanced services to mobile phones and other wireless devices. Designed from the start to take account of the limitations of today's devices - small screen, low power and low bandwidth - WAP is the platform for the new generation of "media phones".

Professional WAP gives a broad overview of WAP and associated technologies - what it is, why it's useful and how to take the best advantage of it. It covers the WAP architecture and protocols, what WAP tools and servers are available for developers today and how to WAP-enable your web server. Practical examples will show you how to make content and services available over WAP using WML Decks and WMLScript. More advanced topics include administration, transactions, security, and integration of telephony with internet services (WTA).

The book is principally aimed at web developers who are experienced in HTML, scripting, probably some server-side technology, and who now want to find out how to apply their skills in the WAP world. It will also appeal to project managers, application architects or other professionals who want to gain an understanding of WAP technologies and how businesses could benefit from them.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and its related technologies are emerging as the standard way of creating network-wise software for wireless computing devices, such as mobile telephones. Wrox Press's crack team of programmer-writers have put together a winner in Professional WAP. To a greater extent than any other WAP book on the market, this volume shows its readers how to do real work by using WAP, Wireless Markup Language (WML), WMLScript, and various toolkits and servers that ease wireless application development. Best of all, the authors realize that most folks working as WAP developers have Web roots; they explain their subjects in terms that anyone with a bit of HTML and Web-scripting (JavaScript or VBScript) background should be able to follow easily.

Aside from the overview sections that explain WAP technologies in broad terms, this book focuses on code. Readers see software literally "develop" through the course of each chapter, as the authors start out with a relatively simple illustration and build on it, adding features and demonstrating capabilities as they go along. Generally high-grade commentary accompanies the evolving code, so this book proves almost as useful away from the development workstation as at it. Overall, the book earns its price with its in-depth coverage of such important, firm standards as WMLScript, supplemented by less detailed--but still useful--attention to such ancillary technologies as VoiceXML. --David Wall

Topics covered: Development of software for mobile telephones and other portable devices with Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Wireless Markup Language (WML), WMLScript, Active Server Pages (ASP), ColdFusion, Java, and other languages and technologies. Task-oriented sections deal with the specifics of working with e-mail in WAP applications, integration of WAP with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and content pushing.

From the Publisher

2000 is the year of the wireless web. The advent of a technology that allows us to access Internet content and services via mobile phone is revolutionizing the way we think about computing. WAP is the first step along this road, and with the advantages that m-commerce and 24-7 accessibility can bring, developers will need to get to grips with this new technology in order to stay one step ahead.

Product Details

• Paperback: 812 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press (July 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861004044
• ISBN-13: 978-1861004048
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,598,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A veteran ColdFusion developer and troubleshooter since 1997, Charlie Arehart is a longtime contributor to the community and a recognized Adobe Community Professional. He's a certified Advanced CF Developer and Instructor for each version since CF 4 who:

* has written over 80 articles for the Adobe DevCenter, FusionAuthority Quarterly Update, CommunityMX, and ColdFusion Developers Journal
* has given more than 90 presentations to hundreds of user groups and 25 different CF conferences
* blogs at http://www.carehart.org/blog
* is a contributor to all three volumes of the CF8 and CF9 Web Application Construction Kit books by Ben Forta et al, and to the Adobe ColdFusion Anthology book, and several other books.

He runs several community resources, including:

* the Online ColdFusion Meetup, http://www.coldfusionmeetup.com, the world's largest CF user group
* the UGTV repository of recorded user group presentations from all over the world (http://www.carehart.org/ugtv)
* the CF411 site with several hundred resources and tools of interest to CFers (http://www.cf411.com)

Now an independent contractor living in Alpharetta GA, Charlie provides high-level troubleshooting/tuning assistance and training/mentoring for CF teams, individuals, and shops (carehart.org/consulting). His customers are as varied as large organizations like UPS and CVS, government agencies, hosting companies, and small to medium sized businesses.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WAP for those who know programming..., September 8, 2000

By 

G. Harris "tekiegreg" (Loveland, CO, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional WAP (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

For those who know any web based programming languages, this book is for you. It gives you the scoop on WAP and what makes it tick. It presents the basic syntax of WAP in a fairly easy to understand format (put it this way, if you know HTML you practically know WAP). It also has an awesome section on how to integrate it with what you already know (In particular the Cold Fusion section was awesome! I leave it to those who know ASP, JSP, and XML to judge the other pieces).

In short, don't buy this if you're just starting web development, I would recommend you learn HTML and one server side language (ASP, ColdFusion, etc.). If you do that, then you're ready to learn WAP with this book and build some truly awesome stuff for the ever blooming wireless world!

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for WAP Beginners to Advance!, July 17, 2000

By 

Gideon Louw - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional WAP (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

This is my first book on Plain WAP and I found it very easy to use and to read! - I also bought the XML for Professionals by wrox which gave me a very good WML Background.

The writing style is absolutely excellent and gives clear tips on code optimization and performance. I have read literally dozens of different books on WAP, and none has been so specific. Although this book is not for total beginners, it is, in my opinion, good for anyone who wants to advance their career on the web or become an WML developer. This is definitely a book you will want to read from cover to cover, and use as a reference!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful and informative, September 29, 2000

By 

Dimitrios K. Souflis (Athens Greece) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional WAP (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

Although I approached this book with skepticism, tending to believe that fat books usually contain more fluff than content, I actually liked it. I understood _what_ WAP was and how it works, and, after a couple of hours toying around with WML, it took me some small part of an otherwise busy day at work to add a WAP face to a small part of the HTTP interface of Ovrimos SQL Server. I had to discover alone, though, how WAP handles 401 responses (it prompts for credentials) and 302 redirections (the Ericsson 320 emulator fails to handle it). I'm left with quite some work to do (to check it with an actual WAP gateway, if possible). I believe the book should have more details on the interaction of HTTP and WAP, not just when everything goes ok (200 Ok, to be exact). Another obvious omission on the subject of dynamically generated WML content, was PHP. PHP probably amounts to a lot more content than JSP does, and will be put in good use when WAP takes off, too. All in all, I'm quite happy with the book, and I wasn't isappointed with "GTK+/Gnome Programming" either. I'll surely keep an eye on Wrox books in the future, and it's quite a change for a person that didn't buy anything that didn't have "Addison-Wesley" or "O'Reilly" on it.