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               Wireless Application Environment


               The main idea behind the wireless application environment (WAE) is to create a
               general-purpose application environment based mainly on existing technologies
               and philosophies of the world wide web.

               Wireless Application Environment

                       The main idea behind the wireless application environment (WAE) is to
               create  a  general-purpose  application  environment  based  mainly  on  existing

               technologies and philosophies of the world wide web. This environment should
               allow service providers, software manufacturers, or hardware vendors to integrate
               their applications so they can reach a wide variety of different wireless platforms
               in an efficient way. However, WAE does not dictate or assume any specific man-
               machine-interface model, but allows for a variety of devices, each with its own
               capabilities and probably vendor-specific extras (i.e., each vendor can have its
               own look and feel). WAE has already integrated the following technologies and
               adapted them for use in a wireless environment with low power handheld devices.


                       HTML,  JavaScript,  and  the  handheld  device  markup  language  HDML
               form  the  basis  of  the  wireless  markup  language  (WML)  and  the  scripting
               language WML script. The exchange formats for business cards and phone books
               vCard and for calendars calendar have been included. URLs from the web can be
               used. A wide range of mobile telecommunication technologies have been adopted
               and integrated into the wireless telephony application (WTA).


               Besides relying on mature and established technology, WAE focuses on devices
               with very limited capabilities, narrow-band environments, and special security
               and access control features. The first phase of the WAE specification developed
               a  whole  application  suite,  especially  for  wireless  clients  as  presented  in  the
               following sections. Future developments for the WAE will include extensions for
               more content formats, integration of further existing or emerging technologies,
               more server-side aspects, and the integration of intelligent telephone networks.




                        Origin Services                   Gateway                           Client

                                                                                              WTA
                             Web                                                            User agent
                             Server        Response                         Encoded
                                             With                           Response
                                            content                          With
                                                                             content
                                                            Encoded                          WML
                                             Push
                                            Content           &             Encoded         User agent
                                                                             Push
                             Other                         Decoders         Content
                          Connect Server
                                                                                              Other
                                                                                              WTA
                                            Request                         Encoded          user agent
                                                                            request


                                               Fig 4.10  WAE Logical Model
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