Delivering Mobile Apps to the Field with Oracle JET

“Z
Delivering Mobile Apps to
the Field with Oracle JET
presented by
Simon Haslam
at Oracle Code One
Session DEV6242
22 October 2018 at 9:00 AM
Moscone West – Room 2014
“
”

Copyright © 2018, eProseed and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. | Confidential
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AGENDA
• Real-world ‘field’ environments
• Oracle JET for mobile apps
• Typical integration challenges
• User experience
• Learning points & summary
4

WHY APPS FOR MOBILE DEVICES?
• Nature of work - desktop or laptop is not suitable for many job roles:
– Outside, materials handling, etc (e.g. warehouse)
– Highly mobile (e.g. sales rep, ticket collector/issuer)
– Hazardous or clinical conditions (e.g. doctor or electrician)
• Reduce barrier for customer interaction
• Bring your own device - extending corporate IT
• Tablet might simply be better means of interacting with IT
5
Photo from
https://www.pexels.com

HOW RETAIL “APPS” HAVE EVOLVED
6
UK car importer/
distributor
App calculates personalised finance terms
for a customer, e.g. at end of test drive
IT to assist salesperson
in a car showroom
1997
App to support the
car sales process
2018
Customer starts car selection
and customisation before
visiting dealer
Example

AGENDA
• User experience
7

WHAT DO YOU NEED FOR A MOBILE ENTERPRISE APP?
8
Data services
‘Functional’ services
Offline
persistence
App dev
tools
Mobile
Device
Management
SDLC
tools
Security
tools
Notification
services
Tracking &
analytics
Operating
System inc app
packaging
Device-specific
features
Identity services
A
P
I
….and this is before you consider microservices!

ORACLE PRODUCTS TO MEET THESE NEEDS
9
Data services
‘Functional’ services
Offline
persistence
App dev
tools
Mobile
Device
Management
SDLC
tools
Security
tools
Notification
services
Tracking &
analytics
Operating
System inc app
packaging
Device-specific
features
Identity services
Mobile Cloud Service
Mobile
Cloud
Service
Integration
Cloud
SOA
Suite Service Bus
Identity
Cloud
Service
ADF
ERP
JET
MAF
MAFPersist.
Toolkit
DevCSAPI
Platform

TYPES OF MOBILE APP
10
Native Hybrid
Progressive
Web Apps
Platform-specific
(multiple teams
for different platforms)
Cross-platform Cross-platform
Ultimate performance
Usually acceptable
performance
Expected to be acceptable
performance
Native APIs Cordova Cordova(?)
This presentation
PLATFORMSSPEED
DEVICE/OS
FEATURES

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DEVELOP HYBRID MOBILE APP?
CordovaJET PackagingOffline
Phone photo by Terje Sollie from Pexels

ORACLE TOOLS FOR MOBILE APP DEV
12
• JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET)
– Integrated & stable collection of open
source frameworks
– Oracle contributions for visual elements
– Many IDEs available for JavaScript
– Oracle offline persistence toolkit
– Apache Cordova is used to access device
features
– Deployment to iOS, Android as hybrid
apps, but also regular web apps e.g. for
desktop usage
• Visual Builder Cloud Service (VBCS)
– Low-code tool, highly graphical
– Runs in the cloud, has a runtime
component
– Builds regular web apps, but can also
build mobile apps to run from cloud
– Access to full range of JET components
– Export JavaScript code so you can use as
JET if you need to go deeper

CORDOVA ARCHITECTURE
Bluetooth Serial
Barcode Receiver
https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/guide/overview/index.html
JET App
JavaScript
JavaScript
Android: Java
Physical
connection
to hardware

THE LASER SCANNER
• Scanner is proprietary feature of the Honeywell hardware
– Including hardware buttons on both sides of device
• Honeywell-customised flavour of Android
– Android Intent (android.scan) for successful scan completed
• We used the cordova-plugin-battery-status as an
example/starting point for our custom Cordova plug-in
https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/reference/cordova-plugin-battery-status/
We could add more features of the Honeywell APIs/SDK to
the plug-in, e.g. enable/disable scan button, multi-scan
14

THE BLUETOOTH PRINTER
• Used BluetoothSerial plug in to communicate with printer
https://github.com/don/BluetoothSerial & in npm
• Bluetooth needs to be paired
• Error handling left a lot to be desired – we’ve made some
improvements (PR imminent)
15

BLUETOOTH PRINTER… CONTINUED
• Serial stream so we needed to program in the native printer
control language
• More than one protocol available
• In this case TPCL, but ZPL (Zebra) is the de-facto industry
standard. Most mobile printers support ZPL or emulate it.
16
We’re doing what a printer driver would normally do…
expect this to be a bit fiddly!

DEMO
17

AGENDA
• User experience
18

TYPICAL INTEGRATION CHALLENGES FOR MOBILE APPS
• Mobile-friendly APIs
– Shape existing services to be lighter & mobile-friendly (SOAP  ReST, XML  JSON)
– Be mindful of the (possibly bad) performance of existing services
• Security
– How will users be authenticated and authorised?
– How will authentication with backend services work?
• Infrastructure/Connectivity
– How will the app access the APIs (LAN, VPN, Internet)?
19

TYPICAL INTEGRATION CHALLENGES FOR MOBILE APPS
• Architectural Recommendation:
Create a centralised layer to mediate
communication between the mobile app and the
back-end services
– Enables a single point of contact and facilitates
both security and connectivity
– This layer can then work out security for each
internal service, decoupled from the mobile app
20
Integrationlayer
ADF BC
SOA Suite
Other Data
Services
This layer could be one or combination of:
API Platform
Mobile Cloud Service (MCS)
Oracle Service Bus
Oracle Integration Cloud
This
presentation

OFFLINE PERSISTENCE
• Offline is required in many/most mobile apps to either:
– give illusion of better performance
– provide application functionality under all network conditions (variable or
none)
• Biggest challenge is cache coherency across devices
– May not be as bad as you think – perhaps first or last “wins”
• You may not need to provide offline capability for all functions
– Most functions may be read-only anyway; transactional ones may have to wait
for connectivity if rare
• JET approach for this is to use Oracle’s offline persistence toolkit:
https://blogs.oracle.com/developers/announcing-offline-persistence-toolkit-for-javascript-
client-applications
https://github.com/oracle/offline-persistence-toolkit
21

OFFLINE PERSISTENCE
• Also see https://andrejusb.blogspot.com/
22

AGENDA
• User experience
23

BACK TO BASICS: OUR USERS
• Who are our users?
• How IT-literate are they?
• What is their working process?
– How much focus do they have on the app
– How does “happy path” compare to non-standard flows?
– Quick wins and process improvement
24
➢Importance of Business Sponsor & Product Owner
➢Mobile app usage means lots of opinions!
➢Management of expectations

THE DEVICE
Don't underestimate device requirements, even if you think app is simple!
Consider:
• Processor speed & memory
• Screen brightness
• Features, e.g. pen, scanning, bluetooth, NFC
• Battery life
– Replacement batteries
– Charging docks
• Physical resilience
– Drop resistance
– Water resistance (or even hygiene, e.g. for hospital use)
• Supported lifespan: service & spare parts25

MOCK-UPS
26

AGENDA
• Oracle technologies for mobile apps
• User experience
27

LESSONS LEARNED
• Do mock-ups early and carefully
– If you have a vision for the whole app do them before dev user stories begin
– We can debate fidelity ☺
– Consider the effect of on-screen keyboard
– The usual difference in perspective for end-user from designer/developer
28

LESSONS LEARNED
• Cordova plug-ins
– May sure you have unit tests & standalone tester for devices
– If writing custom plugin include a mock function for emulator usage
• (can also do from Chrome console but often more convenient to have easy programmatic mode)
• Provide real devices to developers early in project
– Standardise emulator build
– Emulators only help testing to a degree
29

LESSONS LEARNED
• Load test early & often (ideally part of CI?)
– Volume of data & number of REST calls
– Use emulator to see effect of network latency/bandwidth
• CI server integrated with MDM would be perfect!
30

SUMMARY
• Plenty of scenarios where employees need to access IT through
mobile devices
• Oracle JET coupled with Cordova provides mature means to build
mobile apps and with re-use of JavaScript skills
• Hybrid mobile apps offer good compromise between
development flexibility and cost. Keep an eye out for Progressive
Web Apps though.
• Various integration options & cloud services – some overlap so
consider carefully
• Positive user experience is central to success of your project –
consider usage, device, convenience, etc
31

GET STARTED WITH ORACLE JET AT CODE ONE!
32

THANKS FOR LISTENING!
Any questions?
@simon_haslam
33
Follow:
@OracleJET
Do the MOOC! ☺

Delivering Mobile Apps to the Field with Oracle JET

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