Info-On-Demand

Info-On-Demand [35] is a commercial software product. It is, in general, an e-mail agent, which it can update and provides ERP-information across platforms to users’ PDA, notebook, desktop PC, or even mobile phones via WAP. It provides a WWW interface on the Internet for user to set and register his simple batch programs. To set and register these

works have to be finished by desktop PC networked to the Internet in advance. After all the setting is finished, the user now can send an e-mail with specified encoded subject and well-formed mail body to the specified e-mail account. The system of the server will parse the subject and contents of the e-mail, and then fetch user-specified data field from the database according to the requests of the user's commands. When the data requested by the user has completely fetched, the system will wrap the result into an e-mail, and send it to the user's mailbox as soon as possible. The architecture of Info-On-Demand [35] is shown in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1: The architecture of Info-On-Demand.

As Figure 3.1 shows, Info-On-Demand provides a 24-hour customized e-mail agent for users to fetch the data in the remote databases. When the user's e-mail was arrived, only few minutes later, the result e-mail will be sent back right away. It is a great solution for the mobile user to obtain his information from his private database in his company anywhere at anytime. However, until now, the system can only be applied in the database management system. They can't retrieve the information of the Internet at all. Furthermore, the client side's instruction set is too simple to execute the complicate works. Most of the works have to be coded in the server side's environment in advance. The flexibility of the system is limited.

A simple example for the contents of e-mail of Info-On-Demand is shown in Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2: The dialog for a simple query e-mail of Info-On-Demand.

Of course, as mentioned above, all of the built-in functions and user-defined batch programs have to be settled and registered in advance. The setting and register example of Info-On-Demand is shown in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.3: The setting and register dialog of Info-On-Demand.

As Figure 3.3 shows, the role of batch program is to set the actions for information retrieval. The information sources for the user to retrieve are all built in the internal database.

Thus, the batch program can only to specify the data field name for fetching. The name of batch program is specified in the subject of the e-mail, and the contents of e-mail can be treated as the arguments of the batch program. Consequently, the fetched results will be wrapped into an e-mail which is shown in Figure 3.4.

Figure 3.4: The fetched results from the Info-On-Demand system.

According to the mechanism mentioned above, the user can get the information of the databases which is located at his company in anywhere by any mobile devices (includes mobile phone, PDA, notebook, or even desktop PC and workstation) without any other extra application except simple e-mail application. Because the operation for the user is very simple and intuition, it is ideal for those people who always needs the real-time data at anyplace. However, so far, the Info-On-Demand has no solution for the information retrieval on the Internet. Thus, it is not a general solution for advanced information retriever.

Let’s consider another aspect of the problem. Although the notebook PC and pocket PC is much smaller than the desktop devices, it is always a burden for many people. Many people always hope that the handheld terminal is small and powerful. However, in most cases, the small size always means the resource-limited, or the very expensive price. Is there exists a solution for low-end handheld terminals to access the Internet? iSMS is a typical approach which is dedicated on this idea.

3.2.3 iSMS

iSMS [40] is an integration platform for short message service and IP networks. This is a mechanism for combination between the Internet and GSM network of mobile phone.

Utilizing iSMS, the user may direct access this mobile phone by composing and sending SMS to the phone number of iSMS server. Some built-in program of the server will be activated for the user's requests, and then send the results back to the user's mobile phone through SMS protocol. Moreover, the user can also make a schedule in advance. Let the iSMS server actively push some periodic information to the user through SMS periodically. All the works of iSMS do not require any modification to the mobile telephone system architecture, because the SMS is the basic service for all the GSM mobile phone networks. All cellular phones of GSM will provide SMS as well. Moreover, the other mobile phone standards like DAMPS (Digital Advanced Mobile Phone Service), CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) are all providing SMS too.

One of the major advantages of using SMS to be the transmission protocol between mobile phone network and IP network is that the mobile phones can be considered an

"always-on" device that facilitates instant information exchange. No dialup operation is required to access SMS. Furthermore, SIM itself provides the storage for short messages, and the SMS will not occupy the voice, data, and fax services of GSM. The Figure 3.5 shows the basic architecture of iSMS [40].

Figure 3.5: The basic architecture of iSMS.

As shown is Figure 3.5, the iSMS gateway basically requires a mobile phone with SMS service and a computer with the ability for TCP networking. The mobile phone is as the interface between the GSM network and iSMS server, and the iSMS server is response for accessing the TCP/IP network. In this way, the user of GSM network may easily access all the Internet services of TCP/IP network through the iSMS gateway.

The major advantage of iSMS is the utilization of current SMS technology. The SMS is a very basic service of GMS system. All of the GSM mobile phones are equipped the functionality for sending and receiving the messages of SMS. That is, all of the GSM mobile phones can be the terminals of iSMS. The major disadvantage is that the size of SMS is very small, and the transmitting cost for SMS is very expensive. In Taiwan, it costs NT$ 2-3 dollars per SMS message. For larger amount information retrieval, the SMS-based solution is not suitable.

Furthermore, although the SMS is intuitional service for mobile phones, it is not the basic service of PDA and desktop computer. To unify to interaction between people and devices, the e-mail is the better solution than SMS, much less the e-mail can be implemented by SMS in mobile phones.

3.2.4 AvantGo

AvantGo is an acceptable solution for the resource-limited mobile device to obtain the information and documents on the Internet. Actually, it provides thousands of specially formatted brand-name web-sites (“channels”) on user’s PDA or smartphone. These contents of channels include news, weather, sports, stock quotes, maps, movie listings, and more. If a user wants to obtain the information from these channels, first, he has to sign in as a member of AvantGo, and then create his own custom channels to download family sites, local news, niche sites, church and club sites, workout schedules, etc. The great feature of AvantGo is that no wireless connection is necessary. However, this service needs a desktop PC to sync with the user’s mobile device. That is, the mobile device of the user has to sync to the user’s desktop PC for downloading the subscribed channels in advance. Meanwhile, all the information on the subscribed channels will be downloaded at once.

Obviously, the service from AvantGo is an indirect way for the user to obtain the information on the Internet. It lacks an interaction between the user and the information sources. Furthermore, the process for transferring information needs a desktop PC, the

information retrieval model is not suitable for our approach.