Blackberry RAD (Rapid Application Deployment) is a method of connecting to a web service and making use of the facilities on offer. If all you want is a user to visit your website then RAD and all of the facilities it offers might not be for you; there are simpler means of achieving this. Think of RAD as the means by which you can interface your Blackberry smart phones' run time environment (operating system) with back-end web services – thus making the application available to the phone user.
So how does this all work? Well you are going to need an internet based web service for the Blackberry smart phone to communicate with. This will have been created using Web Services for Java (from Sun Micro systems) or Web Services for .NET (from Microsoft). Once you have created the web service, your Blackberry needs a means to communicate with the service and exchange the information to make the application actually work.
This is where the RAD run time environment, called the “BlackBerry® Mobile Data System (BlackBerry® MDS) Run time”, comes into play. This is installed onto the smart phone either locally by the user, OTA (Over The Air) or by an enterprise administrator. Once you have this installed on the Blackberry, you can then run the application developed for the smart phone, called a Blackberry MDS Application to complete the loop and start communicating with your Web Service.
You would have any number of Blackberry MDS Applications, depending on the Web Services you have designed and want to exchange information with. These applications would have been created using either the standalone BlackBerry MDS Studio tool or the BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio. Both of these tools offer advanced GUI (Graphical User Interfaces) allowing the swift and efficient design of your application, to give the user the best possible result.
Blackberry RAD (Rapid Application Deployment) gives the developer the best of both worlds – it is simple and therefore quick to learn, yet also powerful to give the means to produce effective applications. Mix in the ability to communicate with both web services developed under Web Services for Java and Web Services for .NET and you have true flexibility.
Blackberry addicts become acquainted with the new concept quickly and enjoy the added versatility provided by using RAD to promote better communication both for commercial and private use, reaching faster and more targeted communication levels and producing better productivity, which turns higher and faster profits with prolific use.
