Q3 Technologies developed a Smart Phone solution for a European company to operate with a Content Management System which could handle diverse forms of content.

 

Q3's global sourcing model gives the maximum benefit to customers in terms of cost savings, improved quality, access to highly talented professionals, flexibility of operations and reduced time to market.

Company Profile

 

Client is a software product company based in Europe. It develops software solutions for various platforms.

Business Situation

 

Client needed an application for iPhone and BlackBerry with the Front Office features for a Content Management system; which could be configured to operate on the following type of content modules

• Contact Module
• Job Module
• Ads Module
• Real-Estate Module
• Exhibitor Module

The main features required in the application were:

Contact Module

• Perform search on the list of Contacts in the database
• View details of a particular contact.
• A photo gallery to browse through images of a contact.
• View location of a contact on Google map
• View location of a contact on a custom created map
• Forward the contact information to a 3rd party through Email
• Email the person whose contact details are displayed

Job Module

• Perform search on the list of Job Openings in the database
• View details of a particular Job Opening.
• A photo gallery to browse through images of an Employer.
• View location of an Employer on Google map
• View location of an Employer on a custom created map
• Forward the Job Opening to a 3rd party through Email
• Apply to a particular Job Opening

Ads Module

• Perform search on the list of Advertisements in the database
• View details of a particular Advertisement.
• A photo gallery to browse through images of an Advertisement.
• View location of an Advertiser on Google map
• View location of an Advertiser on a custom created map
• Forward the Advertisement to a 3rd party through Email
• Email the person whose contact details are displayed

Real-Estate Module

• Perform search on the list of Real Estate postings in the database
• View details of a particular Estate.
• A photo gallery to browse through images of an Estate.
• View location of an Estate on Google map
• View location of an Estate on a custom created map
• Forward the Estate information to a 3rd party through Email
• Email the Estate owner or broker

Exhibitor Module

• Perform search on the list of Exhibitions in the database
• View details of a particular Exhibit.
• A photo gallery to browse through images of an Exhibit.
• View location of an Exhibit on Google map
• View location of an Exhibit on a custom created map
• Forward the Exhibit details to a 3rd party through Email
• Email the Exhibitor

Challenges

 

iPhone and BlackBerry SDK are loaded with native controls but those controls didn't suit our client's GUI, since we required an identical layout and functionality on iPhone and BlackBerry Storm. Therefore, a number of controls were customized by Q3 Technologies for providing the desired look, feel and functionality of the application.

 

To develop one single application that can be morphed without any customization to work as a client application for different types of Content. Also the same application had to operate with different backend platforms, i.e. .NET, DotNetNuke, SharePoint, PHP, Joomla.

 

Technical Solution

 

The GUI, display content and layout was made dynamic; so that same application can be used to display any type of content. Web services were used for creating a platform independent architecture which removed the requirement for creating separate protocol for communicating with all five backend platforms.

 

iPhone

iPhone Application was developed on Mac OS using XCode with 3.0 version of SDK. gSoap was used for creating Client and Stubs from WSDL for the Web service. These methods of stubs were used from Objective C code from Mac OS. In order to meet with the client's requirement, a number of controls were customized for the GUI and its native look was modified to match up with the required design for fetching the layout information from Web service and displaying it dynamically:

 

BlackBerry

A number of customized controls were developed for the BlackBerry Application. Net RIM API 4.7 was used for the BlackBerry application. Stubs were created with help of java wireless kit for the Webservice. In order to meet with the client's requirement, a number of controls were customized for the GUI and its native look was modified to keep it consistent with the layout for iPhone application:

 

Technologies used

 

iPhone

• iPhone SDK 3.0
• Objective C
• gSoap

 

BlackBerry

• Net RIM API 4.7
• Java Wireless Tookit 2.5.2

 

Benefits

Benefits of availability of Content from Content Management System over iPhone and BlackBerry are:

• Users can browse through the content and forward the information to someone else through email
• No local database required to store the huge amount of data since the application operates online through GPRS
• Ease of accessing data from a handheld device
• Increased efficiency
• No restriction of time or location