Mobile phone enabling APEX 2.2.1?

Question

Hi there.
One of the clients for a project I'm working on has asked about mobile-enabling an application we're buliding in APEX 2.2.1. Specifically he mentioned WAP-enabling the site, but looking at the larger picture I think the feature would be better focused on setting up some sort of way for BlackBerry and PocketPC phone users to access the site. I've got a number of questions associated with this:
- Am I correct in my assumption that all recent BlackBerry models and Pocket Internet Explorer versions will display pretty much any XHTML document? If so, is there a way to guarantee that APEX 2.2.1 will always generate an XHTML-compliant HTML doc? (I've got plenty of sw dev experience, but am relatively new to APEX, so forgive me if I'm asking a really basic question there.)
- What about WAP? I haven't found anything that says APEX will generate WML pages, so I'm assuming that it won't. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
- I've found a couple of HTML-to-WML converters online. If we need to push WML to a WAP browser and APEX won't support WAP, is there a way to decouple the process of APEX generating HTML content and Apache pushing the content to client browsers? My thought process is that if we need to push WAP content out, I could try to go APEX 2.2.1 -> HTML file output from APEX -> 3rd party HTML-to-WAP converter -> WML file output from converter -> Apache -> client browser. I know that Apache can be configured to serve WAP content; I've found plenty of references for that online.
- If there's no way to have APEX serve up WAP content, and no way to decouple the process of generating the HTML page and having it be pushed out by Apaches, has anyone else come up with a solution (whether it's a true solution, work-around, or hack) that will let APEX support WAP?
- What else is anyone else doing as far as pushing WAP content out to the world?
Yes, I realize that WAP is old-school, especially with the release of the latest crop of BlackBerry devices and with the advent of Windows Mobile 6. But as always, what the client wants is what the contractor will strive to deliver...
Thanks for any help in advance.

Answer 1

I built an APEX mobile app that Oracle uses internally for people search, so I've been down this path before. You can easily built a simplified template that works well on the following phones (as reported by our internal users):
- Windows Mobile 5 and 6, Pocket PC Edition, Internet Explorer and Opera
- Windows Mobile SmartPhone Edition
- Nokia 9300 Communicator, Opera
- MotoRokr E6 Linux PDAPhone
- Nokia e62 Symbian
- Sony Ericsson P990i and Opera
- Treo 700p (Palm OS), Blazer
For Windows Mobile (my platform of choice), if you can influence the browser choice at all, Opera is a strong first, with IE on WM6 coming in second and IE on WM5 finishing in last place by a VERY wide margin.
I simply started with an almost empty template, then added the UI elements I needed.
APEX will NOT do WAP, nor do I think there is any way to make it do WAP. It absolutely requires JavaScript to run and I suspect that even if you got it produce WML, most WAP browsers wouldn't support JavaScript. I believe Oracle Application Server Wireless can translate an HTML app into WAP, but I've never used it.
From a development perspective, you can use the Opera browser to emulate Opera Mobile (more info here: Developing Apps for Smartphones but the best option is to get the free Windows Mobile Emulator from Microsoft. There's some good info on it here:
http://www.amset.info/pocketpc/emulator.asp
You'll probably have to pay for an emulator for the blackberry and palm, but I wouldn't even consider starting a project like this without ensuring that all of my developers had relevant emulators for the target platform.
Hope this helps,
Tyler