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Without a doubt, mobility is key to success in today's business world. And yet, for mobile devices such as smart phones to perform the services we expect of them, they frequently must have access to data which may be stored elsewhere. Using integrated cellular phones such as Nokia Communicators we might want to perform such on-demand services as ordering movie tickets, responding to special offers, buying insurance, negotiating contracts, buying merchandise, even setting up appointments with the dentist or car repair shop. IBM DB2® EveryplaceTM, the DB2 solution for mobile devices with the most database features per footprint of any database on the market, gives users the ability to access local data, to synchronize local data with databases elsewhere, perform real-time requests, or call stored procedures.
If you've read some of the earlier DB2 Everyplace articles published on the DB2 Developer Domain, you may already know a great deal about creating a mobile DB2 Everyplace application, setting up a mobile project, and synchronizing with the DB2 Everyplace Synchronization Server. So are you ready now to get it going on your mobile device? In this article, we'll take you through the next step of actually setting up a Nokia 92xx Communicator to work with the DB2 Everyplace Synchronization Server.
We will cover the following activities:
- Setting up a PC for incoming phone connections
- Setting up synchronization objects with DB2 Everyplace Mobile Device Administration Center (MDAC)
- Setting up Nokia Communicator 92xx devices for wireless data synchronization.
Telephone connection to PC setup
In order to explain how to set up a PC for the telephone connection, I'll use an example describing the setup of on a ThinkPad® with Windows® 2000 and an installed phone modem such as 3Com or Lucent Win Modem. The prerequisites for this setup are:
- Telephone wall jack with fixed telephone number
- Modem cable with connection between phone box and Thinkpad
Here are the steps you'll need to follow:
- First, check to see if your modem is active by clicking the following sequence: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> Modems -> e.g "Lucent Win Modem" -> Select Properties -> Check General -> Check Modem Page.
- At the General page check to see if the modem is working properly and active.
- Also, on the Modem page, check to see if the modem is using an existing free port. The Maximum Port Speed of 115200 Baud should be selected.
- Then open the Network and Dial-up Connections list. You will see all existing connections. Select and open the task Make New Connection, as shown in Figure 1
.
Figure 1. Network and dial-up connections
- On the upcoming Network Connection Wizard, click the Next button.
- Click Accept incoming connections.
- In the next window, select your modem. For our example we used the Lucent Win Modem.
- On the Incoming Virtual Private Connection page accept the default settings. Virtual private connections should not be checked by default.
- In the next dialog, specify the users whom you want to have the right to dial in to your Synchronization Server PC.
- You can see in the next window all network components which are installed on your PC, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Network components
- Set the properties of the TCPIP protocol by highlighting the Internet Protocol (TCPIP) in the Networking components list and clicking the Properties button.
- Give the dial-in users access to the local network by enabling the check box Allow callers to access my local area network. To specifically grant applications access to your server, set the following TCPIP addresses as shown in Figure 3. The first address (10.10.10.240) is the server/PC address. The second address (10.10.10.241) specifies the client address which dial in users will get when connected to the PC.
Figure 3. Incoming TCP/IP properties
To support concurrent clients dial-in you need for example an active ISDN controller such as AVM C2 or C4. Or, build up a configuration with an access point such as LinkSys WAP11 access point, which can support many clients and can bridge to a remote DB2 Everyplace server over a wired network.
- Finally, click OK and then the Finish button to create and to activate the dial-up connection.
Setting up the synchronization objects
Before you can start a wireless data synchronization with DB2 Everyplace, you need to specify the synchronization objects with the DB2 Everyplace Mobile Device Administration Center (MDAC) tool. With the Mobile Device Administration Center, you can specify which users can view or manipulate which table records on their mobile devices. The following objects can be defined with the MDAC tool, as shown in Figure 4:
- Users: Client devices that need to synchronize data with an enterprise server. The user employs a mobile device capable of communicating with the DB2 Everyplace Sync Server to replicate data to and from an enterprise system.
- Groups: Collections of uniquely named users, or users that have similar data synchronization requirements.
- Subscription: The definition of data, files or other information that is to be transferred to and from the clients. A subscription provides specifications for how the information in a source system (an enterprise server) is to be synchronized with a target system (the mobile device).
- Subscription Sets: Collections of subscriptions.
- Server: An instance of DB2 Everyplace Synchronization Server that runs on a host and listens to a port. It synchronizes data between targets and mirror databases.
Figure 4. MDAC objects
DB2 Everyplace also provides tools which simplify the creation and manipulation of synchronization objects, using XML script files. If you have a large number of users, it would be time-consuming to perform this task in the Mobile Devices Administration Center. With the XML Scripting tools you can add many users to a group at once. You can also use the XML Scripting tools for easy duplication or movement of data from one server to several other servers.
The final step is to set up the mobile device. To set up the Communicator, create a new Internet access object by selecting Internet->Options->Tools->Internet access->Select->New, and specify:
- A connection name, such as mySyncConnect
- The telephone wall jack fixed phone number where your Synchronization Server is connected
- A username, one of the users selected during the "Incoming connections" PC setup and created with MDAC as a Users object.
Figure 5. Creating a new Internet access object
On the Advanced settings panel, select for example:
Proxy: no -> Connection call: Normal, Analog, Automatic -> Ringback:No -> Permit text: yes, PPP-compression:yes -> Done -> Done -> Stay Online e.g . 2 minutes, query back to connection: yes -> Done.
In the DB2 Everyplace Isync application, or in your created MAB application, specify in the SyncPref Dialog your username and password as specified with MDAC, the server TCP/IP address, 10.10.10.240, and the SyncServer Servlet port number, 8080, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6. SyncPref dialog
Start the SyncServer servlet on your Synchronization Server: Start -> Programs-> DB2 Everyplace -> Start Servlet for SyncServer.
Now run your DB2 Everyplace application or the DB2 Everyplace Isync sample application on your Nokia 92xx Communicator to synchronize the data with the server.
After synchronization is started on your device, click the following sequence to watch the incoming connections on the mid-tier server: Open Windows Explorer -> Network and Dial Up Connections.
Figure 7. Dial-up connections on mid-tier server
We've talked about how to set up DB2 Everyplace data synchronization between a Nokia 92xx Communicator cell phone and a DB2 Everyplace Synchronization Server. After users synchronize data with the server, they can view the data in off-line mode, with high performance, because the data is now local. For more details about DB2 Everyplace and how to set up a mobile project with DB2 Everyplace, read my earlier article,How to Set Up and Execute a Mobile Project with DB2 Everyplace."
Using these instructions, you can synchronize your Nokia Communicator mobile DB2 Everyplace application data records, wherever and whenever required, over a wireless GSM phone connection. Whether you need to access complex binary data, order movie tickets, or just conduct your business, this technology can indeed be used take your DB2 data everyplace.
Walter Mayer has worked several years in the software development and customer services area as a technical consultant for Enterprise Information Portal and Text Mining. Beginning in March 2001, he has worked as a DB2 consultant and DB2 Everyplace project leader in EMEA. He guided the development of a DB2 Everyplace workshop which he taught several times in various locations throughout EMEA. In past years he developed presentations and papers on different areas. In 2004 he became a member of the EMEA CM Business Partner Technical Enablement Team and he teaches CM certification workshops in different IBM EMEA Innovation Centers. He has been involved in a number of ISV and customer projects throughout EMEA.
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