WAP - Wireless Application Protocol

Hi this is a small introduction to wap services which we are using in most of the mobiles WAP has become the defacto global industry standard for providing data to wireless hand-held mobile devicesWAP takes a client server approach and incorporates a relatively simple microbrowser into the mobile phone, requiring only limited resources on mobile phones. WAP puts the intelligence in the WAP Gateways while adding just a microbrowser to the mobile phones themselves. Microbrowser-based services and applications reside temporarily on servers, not permanently in phones. The WAP is aimed at turning mass-market phones into a network-based smart phone. The philosophy behind WAP’s approach is to use as few resources as possible on the hand-held device and compensate for the constraints of the device by enriching the functionality of the network.

WAP specifi es a thin-client microbrowser using a new standard called wireless markup language (WML) that is optimized for wireless hand-held mobile devices. WML is a stripped down version of HTML.

WAP specifi es a proxy server that acts as a gateway between the wireless network and the wireline Internet, providing protocol translation and optimizing data transfer for the wireless handset. WAP also specifi es a computer-telephony integration application programming interface (API), called wireless telephony application interface (WTAI), between data and voice. This enables applications to take full advantage of the fact that this wireless mobile device is most often a phone and a mobile user’s constant companion. On-board memory on a WAP phone can be used for off-line content, enhanced address books, bookmarks, and text input methods.

The importance of WAP can be found in the fact that it provides an evolutionary path for application developers and network operators to offer their services on different network types, bearers, and terminal capabilities. The design of the WAP standard separates the application elements from the bearer being used. This helps in the migration of some applications from short message service (SMS) or circuit-switched (CS) data to general packet radio service (GPRS), for
example. WAP 1.0 was optimized for early WAP-phones.

The wireless application protocol cascading style sheet (WAP CSS) is the mobile version of a cascading style sheet. It is a subset of CSS2 (the cascading style sheet language of the world wide web) plus some WAP specifi c extensions. CSS2 features and properties that are not useful for mobile Internet applications are not included in WAP CSS. WAP CSS is the companion of XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP). Both of them are defi ned in the WAP 2.0 specifi cation, which was created by the WAP forum. XHTML MP is a subset of XHTML, which is the combination of HTML and XML. There are many WAP 2.0-enabled cell phones on the market currently.