Case-Study: Mobile application porting
Client
The client is Wayfinder Systems, a provider of wireless navigation and routing services.
Problem
The Wayfinder system is a route-guidance solution. The client application running in the end-user device presents a user interface and provides location-based services. The client application connects to a remote server for access to map data, processing such tasks as route generation, data synchronization and so on.
The client application is split into two parts: one user-interface-independent engine part that is almost the same for all platforms and that can easily be ported and maintained between systems, and one user-interface part (UI) that is connected to the user-interface-independent engine part. The UI often needs manual adaptation to work on different platforms since the screen layout, operating-system user-interface components and its API, input methods and so on might differ between platforms.
The goal of the project was to port UI to various platforms, namely Pocket PC and Smartphone.
Solution
The client provided the following artifacts for the integration into GUI part of application: existing Symbian platform sources, Nav2 library (user-interface-independent engine part), MapLib library (map handling and rendering part). Nav2 and MapLib libraries were provided with minimal specification, therefore our developers had to perform a thorough analysis for successful integration. Also a simplified prototype was built to prove the application porting success.
The additional difficulty for porting was the development of the system for two platforms simultaneously: Pocket PC and Smartphone. During architecture prototyping it was decided to break the application into three parts: Pocket PC and Smartphone specific modules, and Shared part used by specific modules.
Various technical problems were solved during project implementation: using of GPS data from GPS source via Bluetooth, connecting via GPRS, convenient map handling as bitmaps, etc.
Key features
- Auto-configuration software
- Multilingual support
- Integration with GPS via Bluetooth and cable
- Support for playback of voice instructions
Used technologies and products
- Embedded Visual Studio 4.0;
- C/C++;
- WTL;
- Microsoft Pocket PC 2003 SDK;
- Microsoft Smartphone 2003 SDK;
- CVS.
Project workload
The project team comprised 6 people, and project duration was 8 months.
Benefits for the customer
- New level of system architecture, which provides client with better functionality, scalability and lower costs
- Possibility of further modules integration, to enhance productivity and interchangeability
- Our company will provide maintenance to the resulting solution. This includes adapting to different versions of the same operating system platform, correcting bugs and adding or modifying features.
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