Feasibility Study of a Plug-In Based Architecture for Mobile Blogging
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Feasibility Study of a Plug-in Based Architecture for Mobile Blogging César Zapata Reyes Christoffer Jakobsen MASTER THESIS 2007 COMPUTER ENGINEERING Förstudie av en Plug-in Baserad Arkitektur för Mobil Bloggning Feasibility Study of a Plug-in Based Architecture for Mobile Blogging César Zapata Reyes Christoffer Jakobsen Detta examensarbete är utfört vid Tekniska Högskolan i Jönköping inom ämnesområdet datateknik. Arbetet är ett led i teknologie magisterutbildningen med inriktning informationsteknik . Författarna svarar själva för framförda åsikter, slutsatser och resultat. Handledare: Thomas Gustafsson Examinator: Vladimir Tarasov Omfattning: 20 poäng (D-nivå) Datum: Arkiveringsnummer: Postadress: Besöksadress: Telefon: Box 1026 Gjuterigatan 5 036-10 10 00 (vx) 551 11 Jönköping Abstract Abstract There is no standard format for posting blog entries, which results in many different web feed formats and APIs being used. This thesis work addresses the problem by determining the feasibility of the development of a plug-in based architecture, used in a mobile blogging application compatible with multiple service providers. During the study, a definition of what a feasible architecture would be was made based on requirements set by the stakeholders. Six models that complied with this definition were designed and compared. One of them was selected for prototyping. The prototyping phase was intended to test if the architecture could be implemented in a mobile environment. The study revealed that it is feasible to develop a plug-in based architecture to solve the problem, although with some limitations due to the dependency of libraries for streaming XML transformations not yet implemented in J2ME. i Sammanfattning Sammanfattning Det finns inget standardformat för att posta ett blogginlägg, vilket resulterar i att många olika web feed-format och APIer används. Det här examensarbetet angriper problemet genom att undersöka om det är genomförbart att utveckla en plug-inbaserad arkitektur för en applikation till mobiltelefoner, som är kompatibel med flera olika bloggtjänster. Under studiens gång definierade vi vad termen genomförbart skulle innebära, baserat på krav från olika intressenter. Sex modeller som uppfyllde definitionen utvecklades och jämfördes. En av dessa valdes ut för att användas som grund för en prototyp. Prototypfasen avsåg att bevisa om arkitekturen kunde implementeras i en mobil miljö. Studien visade att det är genomförbart att utveckla en plug-inbaserad arkitektur för att lösa problemet, dock med några begränsningar på grund av beroende av bibliotek för strömmande XML- transformationer som ännu inte implementerats i J2ME. ii Acknowledgements Acknowledgements This Master’s thesis project was carried out at the Messaging Department of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, Lund, Sweden. We would like to thank our supervisors Mats Cedervall, at Lund Institute of Technology, Thomas Gustafsson and Vladimir Tarasov, at Jönköping University’s School of Engineering, and Mattias Niklewski, at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, for all their help and support. We would also like to thank Elisa Ayala Anglés, for helping us out with the graphical design of the pictures used. Finally, we would also like to extend our gratitude to the employees at Sony Ericsson that helped us during our work. June, 2007 Lund, Sweden iii Keywords Keywords Handler API (CHAPI), Feasibility study, J2ME, Mobile blogging, Plug-in architecture, Web-feed formats, XML transformations iv Contents Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................. 1 1.1 BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................1 1.2 PROBLEM ................................................................................................................................3 1.3 PURPOSE ................................................................................................................................3 1.4 SCOPE .....................................................................................................................................4 1.5 RESULTS .................................................................................................................................4 1.6 THESIS OUTLINE .....................................................................................................................5 2 Preliminaries ............................................................................ 6 2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ................................................................................................6 2.1.1 Blogging ...............................................................................................................................6 2.1.2 Underlying Technologies ..........................................................................................................9 2.1.3 Web Feeds and Web Syndication Formats ................................................................................15 2.2 RESEARCHING FOR NEW TECHNOLOGIES .............................................................................19 2.2.1 Feasibility Study ..................................................................................................................19 2.2.2 Concept Development and Experimentation ..............................................................................20 2.2.3 Evaluation of the architectures ................................................................................................21 2.3 CURRENT ARCHITECTURE .....................................................................................................23 3 Problem Definition ................................................................. 24 3.1 CONSTRUCTION OF A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................24 3.1.1 Description of the current situation ...........................................................................................24 3.1.2 Objectives of the system ..........................................................................................................27 3.2 RELATED FACTORS AND CONSTRAINTS .................................................................................29 3.3 PROBLEMS ............................................................................................................................29 4 Method .................................................................................. 31 4.1 DEFINING FEASIBLE IN THIS SCENARIO ................................................................................32 4.2 RESEARCH IN THE FORM OF A FEASIBILITY STUDY ................................................................32 4.3 PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT .................................................................................................33 5 Realization ............................................................................. 34 5.1 DEVELOPMENT OF A SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE ......................................................................34 5.2 ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF THE SYSTEM ................................................................................36 5.2.1 Possible alternatives ..............................................................................................................36 5.2.2 Criteria for comparison ..........................................................................................................42 6 Results ................................................................................... 44 6.1 ANALYSIS OF ALTERNATIVES ................................................................................................44 6.2 DESCRIPTION OF THE SELECTED MODEL ..............................................................................48 6.2.1 Model description .................................................................................................................48 6.2.2 Use cases ............................................................................................................................49 6.3 EVALUATION OF THE MODEL ...............................................................................................51 6.3.1 Prototyping Phase I ..............................................................................................................51 6.3.2 Prototyping Phase II .............................................................................................................56 7 Conclusions and discussion .................................................... 59 7.1 CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................................59 v Contents 7.2 DISCUSSION ..........................................................................................................................60 7.3 FURTHER RESEARCH ............................................................................................................61 8 References ............................................................................. 62 9 Appendix ............................................................................... 66 Appendix A: Model Generations .................................................... 67 ANNA .................................................................................................................................................67 First Generation ................................................................................................................................67