Push Services –> mobile and enterprise (Vaadin + OSGI)

in enterprise applications there are many use-cases where you have to provide informations instantly to users.

if the user is on a mobile device, you can use push services provided by apple, google, microsoft or rim. i’ll blog about push services for mobile users in another blog about enmocs (enterprise – mobile – communication server using eclipse rt technologies).

enmocs is a server, so there’s an admin managing the server and i want to provide different kinds of ui:

• rcp/rap ( riena – redview )
• mobile app’s
• and also an admin –  web ui.

this blog is about the latter: a web ui and because the enmocs server is built on top of osgi, the web ui should also  be a good member.

inspired by kai tödter’s blog “ dynamic modular web applications with vaadin and osgi ” i did some tests with vaadin : a really great web ui framework, where you’re developing all at server side using java and vaadin only uses gwt to render at client side. this is fantastic for me, because i like developing  with java instead of html and javascript.

the next good thing about vaadin: all the uncount add-ons enabling you to build great looking applications – and most of them are open source licensed.

vaadin also provides an eclipse plugin , so i can use my beloved ide.

i’m not a classical web developer, so i don’t like to develop war’s, web.xml, … – i prefer to use osgi http-services instead. fortunately i’m not alone and chris brind, neil bartlett and peter kriens did some work on this and kai made an easy-to-use demo application.

at the same time as i’m developing the enmocs server one of my customers requested a web portalapplication to be used side-by-side with his erp solution (osgi – equinox – based at server-side and rcp-riena-redview at client side). as next some discussions with florian – my partner at redview - followed and flo also did some tests and and some time later a new open source project was born: redvaadin

• redvaadin will be the web – counterpart of redview (responsible for rcp/desktop)
• redvaadin will provide tools, examples and demos howto use vaadin and osgi
• redvaadin will provide push services, so you can push informations from osgi server to vaadin web clients
• redvaadin will provide sample application layout for business applications similar to riena toolbox (assembling a business app)
• redvaadin will provide a dsl (xtext) to describe the model of your business app layout to generate code for redvaadin and redview

at redvaadin you’ll find allready some documentation i did:

• howto use vaadin and osgi (based on kai’s demo)
• howto use vaadin add-ons together with osgi

and florian did some work on push services : there’s already a vaadin add-on icepush providing this feature to vaadin web applications and since yesterday a first draft of florian’s redvaadin – pushservices can be downloaded and tested. (btw: since some time i told florian about the power of osgi declarative services – equinox ds – and now he’s using them and from day to day he likes it more

if you  want to test it out and perhaps provide some feedback:

• i wrote a howto use redvaadin’s push services
• and florian blogged about the technical details .

redvaadins push demo is based on kai’s vaadin – osgi demo.

using redvaadin osgi push services i’m now able to resolve this use-case: a business application sends informations using push services to mobile devices (in this example blackberry). if it’s an important message and the message could not be delivered in-time (== before a given timestamp), then the admin has to be notified: in this example pushing to a running web client:

1. pushing informations from contentserver (enmocs – equinox – osgi) through jetty – http to blackberry push server (bis)
2. bis pushes information to blackberry device(s)
3. push-enabled java app receives message, notifies user or processes in background + sends confirmation to bis
4. bis notifies contentserver if message could be delivered in-time
5. contentserver notifies admin using redvaadin’s pushservices if important pushes couldn’t be delivered in-time

enmocs can also push to running riena-redview rcp – apps or itself using mobile push services and push to admin’s mobile device.

the use-case above is only one of many scenarios – more will be described in detail later.

btw: enmocs will support push services x-platform (apple, google, microsoft, rim).

read more about redvaadin push services using icepush at florian’s blog here , download the examples , read the howto’s and play around with it.  we’re waiting for your feedback to make it better. push demo projects include sources, so you can take a look behind the scenes. source repository will be public end of may 2011.

from http://ekkescorner.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/push-services-mobile-and-enterprise-vaadin-osgi/