MIDlets on Symbian

For J2ME/MIDP programming, Mimer offers a MIDP-driver featuring a subset of the regular JDBC driver. Exactly which features are available is seen in the JDBC Guide and the MIDP Reference (currently only available on the Mimer developer web,
http://developer.mimer.com/documentation/latest_javadoc_midp).

MIDlets and the Symbian Emulator

Unfortunately, the Symbian emulator provides a different TCP/IP-stack for MIDP applications. MIDP applications share the same TCP/IP-stack as the hosting Windows operating system, while other components of the Symbian emulator use the built-in Symbian TCP/IP-stack. This means the MIDP-client will have problems connecting to an emulated Mimer server. There is an unsupported plug-in for the emulator to make it use the Windows TCP/IP-stack rather than its own but we have not been able to get it working reliably when clients are connecting to a Symbian TCP/IP-server. It is therefore difficult for MIDlets to connect to a Mimer SQL Mobile server in the Symbian emulator.

We have found that the easiest way to develop Mimer SQL Mobile applications is to run the MIDlet in an emulator against a Windows Mimer SQL Mobile server. You may start the Mimer SQL Mobile server in Mobile mode, which means that you are using the same set of features as is available when deploying on the handsets. To be able to create database objects and precompiled SQL statements, the server must be running in Engine mode. The setting to switch between Engine (for development) and Mobile (for testing) is found in the Mimer Administrator after clicking the Configure button. See the dialog below:

You may use any emulator but we feel that the MIDP emulator supplied with the Sun J2ME Wireless Toolkit offers the most convenient choice. One further advantage of testing the MIDlet in that environment is that you will test the MIDlet against a specific MIDP specification (currently either 1.0.4 or 2.0).

To summarize, these are the recommended steps when developing Mimer SQL Mobile MIDlets on Symbian:

After installing Mimer SQL Mobile on your desktop, develop and test your data model and precompiled statements using the Engine mode.
Switch to Mobile mode in the Mimer Administrator.
Use the J2ME Wireless Toolkit to develop and test the MIDlet.
Possibly, install the MIDlet on the Symbian emulator for further testing and development.
Deploy database and MIDlet on handset for final testing. The database is deployed using the Export to handheld/emulation option found in the Mimer Administrator. Right-click on your development database to bring up this menu.

For an example on how to create an application is this environment, please see the article Java programming for mobile phones with Mimer SQL.