Mobile Frontends for Enterprise Resource Planning-An Architechural Approach

摘要

An increasingly important requirement for the core information systems that today's organiza-tions rely on is that these systems support the mobile behavior of their users. This trend goes hand in hand with ubiquitous computing [Wei91], i.e. providing access to information and computing power independent of locations and devices. Technologies for mobile business are maturing, becoming more and more powerful. Some severe restrictions set by the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communica-tion) stan-dard, in particular slow transmission rates (max. 9,600 bits per second), have already been overcome by the HSCSD (High Speed Cir-cuit Switched Data) and GPRS (General Packet Ra-dio Ser-vice) technologies. Those technologies provide theoretical transmission rates of 43.2 kbps and 171.2 kbp/s, respectively. Third generation networks like UMTS (Univer-sal Mo-bile Tele-com-mu-ni-cation System) with up to 2 mbp/s will be available soon and further relax the limita-tions for mobile business imposed by current bandwidths. In Japan, NTT DoCoMo's third generation i-mode service has been launched in 1999 already [Yam02].