Multi-User Publishing Environment
It can be difficult to develop mobile applications when tools are less mature and Java/C++ is different than on the server/desktop. Debugging on the phone can be difficult. Furthermore, developing for mobile can also involve use of expensive data tariffs. It also often proves difficult to upgrade applications that have already been deployed.
Multi-User Publishing Environment (MUPE) is a development system that has been devised to reduce some of these problems. MUPE provides a single self-updating JAVA ME client that provides a UI to access and use one or more ‘applications’ available within the main UI application. End users are only required to do a single install. All programming is performed server side using XML and J2SE.
MUPE is completely open source. Developers are free to modify any part of the platform and have access to all the source code. (Including the parts that do not need changes by developers). There’s even a tool plugin for Eclipse.
What’s the catch? Well, this way of working requires that end users have a data connection, irrespective of whether the application logic actually needs this. Hence, MUPE is more suitable for use with applications that already need to use server side data. Also, MUPE only provides a subset of functionality provided by Java ME (and the various optional JSRs). For example, it doesn’t provide support for JAVA ME threads.
