This book explains almost all about syncing your email and other data with mobile devices using Funambol 7.1

• Provide push email capabilities and synchronization services for mobile devices and PC software using Funambol
• Develop your own Funambol extensions
• Many examples explaining all functionalities provided by the Funambol platform
• An easy reading for system administrators and developers who want to keep in sync enterprise data

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In Detail

Funambol is a free and open source mobile synchronization server that provides push email, address book and calendar (PIM) data synchronization, and device management for wireless devices. Are you looking to sync your email and other data with mobile devices for easy access? This book will show you how to do that via the Internet cloud.

With the help of this complete, practical guide you will learn how to access your email, calendar, contacts, important notes a lot more easily and quickly using Funambol. You will be able to sync a large number of online applications with your mobile devices. You will also be able to develop, deploy, and manage any mobile project.

This book will show you how to provide a full-featured PIM synchronization and push email service with Funambol.
You will start by installing Funambol on a personal computer, and then move on to acquire detailed information on the Funambol architecture and the network requirements for deploying it. You will cover several components of Funambol such as Data Synchronization Server, Device Management, Client Plugins, and more.

As you reach the end of the book, you will delve deeper to explore the wide range of possibilities of the Funambol platform beyond the immediate needs of personal data synchronization and mobile email. The book is also a great starting point for anyone who aims to extend Funambol. This book was targeted at version 7.1 of Funambol, but is also applicable to version 8.

Read the full Table of Contents for Funambol Mobile Open Source

Read the sample Content for Funambol Mobile Open Source

What you will learn from this book

• Install the server on both Linux and Windows environment, and learn how to start/stop Funambol services
• Sync your data with other devices and get notified of new emails or other personal data changes
• Start synchronization automatically to receive changes made with another application or device using push synchronization
• Connect to the Data Synchronization Service using Funambol administration tool
• Synchronize all different devices with a central PIM database and email system using the different push mechanisms
• Access a database on a separate machine instead of the local database by configuring Funambol
• Restrict access to specific users, add new users, and track registered users using the Funambol Administration Tool
• Set up and start the PIM Connector and PIM Listener Service, and learn how it works in a complex scenario using a Windows Mobile phone
• Develop a custom connector to access an external data source by following a simple tutorial-styled example

Approach

The book is composed of two parts. The first part will take you through the steps required to fully understand and deploy Funambol to provide PIM synchronization and push email solution to your mobile users. This is done step-by-step, starting from a simple personal usage scenario to a more complex environment that must serve thousands of users. All components of the platform are smoothly introduced and explained, starting from the functionality they provide. The second part of the book is more informative and will assist you in building Funambol extensions. In particular, it contains an easy-to-follow tutorial that will allow you to write a Funambol connector in a few easy steps.

Who this book is written for

If you are looking forward to install and get started with Funambol, this book is for you. You need to have a technical background and be confident with a bit of code tweaking, but not a developer.
General server administration skills are assumed and familiarity with Java will be a benefit in places.

Author(s)

Stefano Fornari

Stefano Fornari is a co-founder and CTO of Funambol, Inc., the leading provider of open source mobile cloud sync and push email solutions for billions of phones. Stefano had several years of software development experience before starting the Funambol open source project in 2003. He was one of the main contributors of the project and was also the project manager. Today, Stefano is in charge of the engineering team of Funambol. Prior to his development work on Funambol, Fornari was the chief architect at Stigma Online where he played a key role in the development of the company’s flagship portal product, SolWeb Intra. He has also held positions at Compaq, where he was an advisor on wireless technologies in PDAs, and at Art Technology Group (ATG) as a consultant. He holds an M.S. Degree in Computer Science.

The Funambol core project is a free and open source mobile synchronization server that provides push email, address book and calendar (PIM) data synchronization, and device management for wireless devices, leveraging standard protocols such as SyncML (as defined by Wikipedia). Using Funambol, we can have a BlackBerry-like features on cheap handsets which have at least J2ME and GPRS capabilities (well, almost all of them have this feature now).

Image via Wikipedia

We can use Funambol to synchronize our email, address book, and calendar data from many kind of mobile devices (Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Palm, iPod, iPhone, and any J2ME capable devices) and popular services on the web like Gmail, Facebook, MSN, and Yahoo, and even desktop applications like Ms Outlook, Thunderbird, and Lotus Notes.

It means that we can read, compose, and reply/forward emails from our mobile device with the same account as our GMail or Yahoo Mail. Using it’s push email technology, we can be notified by our cheap mobile phone when someone send us an email on our Gmail account. We can add a task or schedule a meeting on calendar using Outlook then we can see them on a cheap K320i Sony Ericsson mobile phone as well as on Gmail Task. Our contact address books will also be synchronized between all devices, services, and application that we use, meaning that our phone address book will be the same as our Yahoo, Outlook, or Gmail Contacts database. This is a very good solution for backing up valuable contact database especially for those who always lost his mobile phone easily (like me ;)).

Companies with large number of mobile employees and very tight schedule will take advantage by installing it’s own internal Funambol server, as the employees will be reminded always with it’s task and schedule as well as keep in contact with the headquarters using push email technologies. This can be achieved using the employees’ handsets that they already have.

Components

Funambol consists of several components:

• Funambol Data Synchronization Server: a mobile application server providing synchronization services for wireless clients and PCs, including push email.
• Funambol Device Management: an OMA DM server to remotely manage mobile devices.
• Funambol Connectors: gateways to file systems, databases, email systems, and applications for two-way synchronization with existing data assets.
• Funambol Client Plug-ins: protocol extenders and clients for Microsoft Office Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird (experimental), Mozilla Sunbird (experimental), Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Palm and iPod and iPhone so users can synchronize their email messages and PIM data (address book, calendar, tasks and notes) with the server.
• Funambol Software Development Kit: tools to develop sometimes-connected mobile applications on devices (in Java – J2SE and J2ME – and C++) and to add data sources to the server.

How Does It Works?

Funambol Data Synchronization servers listen on a specific port that act as a synchronization server between mobile devices, desktop applications, and web services. All these clients and Funambol use the same language, SyncML, to to the synchronization process. Funambol has its own database to store client user data, devices profile, services that the user have, email account, etc. Once setup, Funambol will keep checking on the users email account and when an email arrives on that account, Funambol will push that email to users’ handset which already installed with Funambol Client application. Using SyncML, users can add a task on their handset, then do the synchronization, and Funambol will process this task synchronization to other services that they have, for example to Gmail, Yahoo, or MSN. When they log in to Gmail, they will see the same task that they entered on their handset before.

System requirements

Windows-based host

• Pentium 4 CPU, running at 1.8GHz
• Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista
• 200 MB of free disk space
• 768 MB memory

Linux-based host

• Pentium 4 CPU, running at 1.8GHz
• No Linux version or publisher restrictions, at present
• 200 MB of free disk space
• 512 MB memory

Public IP address is a must, since mobile devices will need it to do the synchronization process.

Business Opportunity

• For System integrator and implementation service company: installing and implementing Funambol server for companies, telecommunication services, community. This can be charged by man-hour or contract based project.
• Software developer: developing new module for integrating Funambol to an existing system, using Funambol SDKs. This can be charged by man-hour or contract based project.
• Consultancy and Training on how to install, implement, integrating, development and extending Funambol: This can be charged by man-hour or contract based project.
• Service Provider: for companies which run it’s own synchronization services for it’s own customers, Funambol provides Funambol Carrier Edition, which can be bought commercially and be customized to to suit the company’s logo, brand name, etc.

Where to go further

• www.funambol.com – official Funambol corporation website
• www.forge.funambol.org – official Funambol Open Source website
• my.Funambol.com – free 90 days trial on how Funambol service looks like
• www.vitraining.com – provides installation, implementation, integrating, development and extending Funambol services worldwide