Using TIBCO Silver Mobile with TIBCO Web Messaging

Every company has or it's planning to have a mobile app these days and among other top priorities like Social, Event Processing, Analytics and Cloud, Mobility is a hot topic for CIOs looking for how they can change the game and put on their internal and external consumers' fingertips the right information at the right time with the right context. Not only that requirement but also how to capture, sense, act and respond to business events and notify mobile users of actions they need to take or what just happened that's so important to them.

Sometimes, there is a big disconnection between the "App" and all the backend systems that really do all the heavy lifting.

Integrating those two distinct worlds is getting easier primarily because of technologies like TIBCO Silver Mobile and TIBCO Web Messaging. Those product already have their huge value attached to their capabilities but when you combine them then the value brought to the table is extreme. 

TIBCO Silver Mobile is an open mobile development application platform (MDAP) that lets you build and manage mobile apps and create your own secure enterprise app portal. The platform lets you leverage whatever investments you've made in back-end automation infrastructure, whether from TIBCO or another provider.

Some of the Silver Mobile benefits are:

- Helps decrease mobile application development time and cost with a cross-platform, write-once environment and simplified Java and HTML5 back-end integration capabilities
- Lets you easily build onto your web application code base and add provisions for using pictures, video, contacts, and other data collected by mobile workers to mobile applications
- Deploys mobile apps securely on your own mobile app portal using your existing security standards and controls access to app downloads and the information available through them
- Supports Android, iOS, and others – and provides a familiar mobile app download process
- Gives front-line mobile workers access to the full resources of the enterprise by letting them access and contribute information in real time

You can download TIBCO Silver Mobile from the TIBCO Access Point (TAP) here: http://tap.tibco.com/storefront/trialware/tibco-silver-mobile/prod15310.html

On the other hand, TIBCO Web Messaging overcomes traditional HTTP-based web architectures that simply don't provide the real-time, bidirectional communication that today's new applications and services demand by using HTML5 WebSocket.

Some of the Web Messaging benefits are:

- Build compelling real-time applications using the new HTML5 WebSocket standard for low-latency web communication with a fraction of the overhead of existing web architectures.
- Use HTML5 API for Java Message Service, support legacy browsers, and natively integrate TIBCO EMS for faster and at less costly web and mobile application development.
- Don't sacrifice enterprise readiness to get next-generation web services with TIBCO Enterprise Message Service integration, enhanced security, and connection offloading.
- Natively integrate with TIBCO Enterprise Message Service to extend the reach of enterprise IT infrastructures through asynchronous or synchronous communication.
- Provide real-time full-duplex communication for web applications with HTML5 WebSocket at a fraction of the overhead of existing web architectures.
- Simplify application development for multiple client platforms with a JMS-client API familiar to enterprise developers.

In conclusion, combining these two powerful technologies give the business users not only full access to the information they need at any time and any place but also leverage the resources your company already invested on.

Configuring TIBCO Web Messaging to Securely Connect to TIBCO EMS

If you want to configure your TIBCO Web Messaging gateway, which normally lives in the DMZ, to connect to TIBCO EMS messaging backbone over a TCP connection, the procedure is straightforward. Just point to the TIBCO EMS server hostname and port number, assuming that's already open in the firewall, in the trusted network and that's it.

Something similar to the following service (stomp.jms) configuration should be enough:

<service>
  <accept>ws://${gateway.hostname}:${gateway.nonsecure.port}/jms</accept>
  <type>stomp.jms</type>
    <properties>
      <connection.factory.name>GenericConnectionFactory</connection.factory.name>
      <context.lookup.topic.format>%s</context.lookup.topic.format>
      <context.lookup.queue.format>%s</context.lookup.queue.format>
      <env.java.naming.factory.initial>
            com.tibco.tibjms.naming.TibjmsInitialContextFactory
      </env.java.naming.factory.initial>
      <env.java.naming.provider.url>
            tcp://${EMS.hostname}:${EMS.portNumber}
      </env.java.naming.provider.url>
      <destination.strategy>session</destination.strategy>
    </properties>
    <realm-name>dev_realm</realm-name>
    <authorization-constraint>
      <require-role>AUTHORIZED</require-role>
    </authorization-constraint>
  </service>

Now, if you want to configure an end-to-end secured enabled environment then some extra parameters are necessary to make everything work correctly. The service configuration below will give you what you need (most of them are self-explanatory) to enable that.

<service>
    <accept>wss://${gateway.hostname}:${gateway.secure.port}/jms</accept>
    <type>stomp.jms</type>  
    <properties>
     <connection.factory.name>SecureConnectionFactory</connection.factory.name>
      <context.lookup.topic.format>%s</context.lookup.topic.format>
      <context.lookup.queue.format>%s</context.lookup.queue.format>
      <connection.security.principal>ems_user</connection.security.principal>
      <connection.security.credentials>ems_password</connection.security.credentials>
      <env.java.naming.factory.initial>
          com.tibco.tibjms.naming.TibjmsInitialContextFactory
      </env.java.naming.factory.initial>
      <env.com.tibco.tibjms.naming.security_protocol>
          ssl
      </env.com.tibco.tibjms.naming.security_protocol> 
      <env.java.naming.provider.url>
         ssl://${EMS.hostname}:${EMS.securePortNumber}
      </env.java.naming.provider.url>
      <env.com.tibco.tibjms.naming.ssl_enable_verify_host>
         true
      </env.com.tibco.tibjms.naming.ssl_enable_verify_host>  
      <env.com.tibco.tibjms.naming.ssl_trusted_certs>
         ems_certificate.pem
      </env.com.tibco.tibjms.naming.ssl_trusted_certs> 
      <env.com.tibco.tibjms.naming.ssl_trace>
         true
      </env.com.tibco.tibjms.naming.ssl_trace>
      <destination.strategy>session</destination.strategy>
     </properties>
     <realm-name>dev_realm</realm-name>
     <authorization-constraint>
      <require-role>AUTHORIZED</require-role>
    </authorization-constraint>  
  </service>

The current version of TIBCO Web Messaging also provides you a really nice feature called Reverse Connectivity where you will be able to close all incoming traffic ports while still allowing external clients to initiate the connection. But, this is a topic to be explored on a next post. Stay tuned!

Searching for the same thing over and over again...

I have to admit that I very often run queries on Google for things I've searched before and many times I end up with the exact same results. I'm also a big fan of Evernote where I keep my notes organized per project, topic, event, place, etc...

Luckily, the Evernote Web Clipper has a feature that seems to solves the issue above allowing you to simultaneously search on Google and also on your Evernote notes.

To enable that capability all you have to do is to right-click in the Web Clipper and then make sure you have the Related Results checkbox enabled. I believe this is available only in Google Chrome and Apple Safari for now.

Evernote Web Clipper Related Results to add simultaneous search capabilities with Google

On your next Google search, you should be able to see results similar to the following picture (with the Evernote results boxed in to the right).

Do Not Disturb!

To all of my friends out there with their powerful iOS 6 devices, you may haven't noticed yet but if you use the Do Not Disturb feature it will stay on after scheduled time and that's caused by a bug reported here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4510 and it will stay on until Jan, 07th 2013 causing your device to do not alert, notify, ring, etc (depending on your setup) until you turn DND off manually.

Remote Debugging Mobile Web Apps

Just found this little tool called jsconsole that's a tremendous help with remote debugging mobile web applications.
All you have to do is to navigate to jsconsole.com and type :listen in the top command prompt and insert the  <script> tag generated back to you on your web application after the connection has been established.
Then, after loading the application on your mobile device you should be able to see all the JavaScript output.

Removing Click Delays on Mobile Browsers

If you ever wanted to get rid of the 300ms delay between a physical tap and the the firing of a click event introduced on mobile browsers then the polyfill those guys from Financial Times created is the answer you are looking for.

Available on GitHub, FastClick is a simple, easy-to-use library for eliminating that delay and make your application feel more responsive to, for example, the touch of a button.

Have a look and fork the project at: https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick 

You can also give it a try running one of the demos on your mobile device pointing your browser to: http://ftlabs.github.com/fastclick/examples/layer.html (it won't work on your desktop browser as the library doesn't attach any listeners to them).

Fascinating and job well done...

Running iOS Simulator from Command Line

I've recently migrated to Mountain Lion and it looks like I couldn't start the iOS Simulator from command line as I used to do in Snow Leopard.

Luckily, I was able to find a solution and all development is back to normal now :)

Here is how to run the iOS Simulator from command line:

$ open /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications/iPhone\ Simulator.app


and that assumes that you have installed Xcode under /Applications.

You can also create a script with the content above and update your $PATH variable or even create a symbolic link under your /Applications folder using the following:

$ ln -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications/iPhone\ Simulator.app/ /Applications/