Design of An applications programming interface for mobile applications

This paper describes the detailed design of the MAP Applications Programming Interface for mobile applications. This API has been designed to aid the developer to achieve a rational use of the bandwidth available to the mobile, to let the application make use of context related information that could be useful to modify its behavior depending on location and on network quality of service. The API implements these goals through the use of a distributed object environment, which separates the application in two different parts, one resident on a server in the wired part of the communications link and the other embedded on the mobile device. Hand-off and fault-tolerance are achieved through the use of a communication link between the different servers on the wired link.