Comments
cloudhosting14 wrote: As you would already know that managed hosting itself is another form of Cloud hosting in which the system administrations of servers is looked upon by the CPs. Similar is the case with managed multi Cloud hosting. You can very well understand how a big burden it would be to manage multi cloud servers for organization; this is why a service known as managed multi Cloud is provided to these users. This service ensures them the seam less running of their system administrative operations while organizations focus more on t...

2008 West
DIAMOND SPONSOR:
Data Direct
SOA, WOA and Cloud Computing: The New Frontier for Data Services
PLATINUM SPONSORS:
Red Hat
The Opening of Virtualization
GOLD SPONSORS:
Appsense
User Environment Management – The Third Layer of the Desktop
Cordys
Cloud Computing for Business Agility
EMC
CMIS: A Multi-Vendor Proposal for a Service-Based Content Management Interoperability Standard
Freedom OSS
Practical SOA” Max Yankelevich
Intel
Architecting an Enterprise Service Router (ESR) – A Cost-Effective Way to Scale SOA Across the Enterprise
Sensedia
Return on Assests: Bringing Visibility to your SOA Strategy
Symantec
Managing Hybrid Endpoint Environments
VMWare
Game-Changing Technology for Enterprise Clouds and Applications
Click For 2008 West
Event Webcasts

2008 West
PLATINUM SPONSORS:
Appcelerator
Get ‘Rich’ Quick: Rapid Prototyping for RIA with ZERO Server Code
Keynote Systems
Designing for and Managing Performance in the New Frontier of Rich Internet Applications
GOLD SPONSORS:
ICEsoft
How Can AJAX Improve Homeland Security?
Isomorphic
Beyond Widgets: What a RIA Platform Should Offer
Oracle
REAs: Rich Enterprise Applications
Click For 2008 Event Webcasts
SYS-CON.TV
Today's Top SOA Links


Book Review: Programming Android
Java Programming for the New Generation of Mobile Devices

The second edition of this book came just at the right time. I am currently working on a project that uses Microsoft's Web Api RESTful services to interface with iPhone, iPad, Windows 8 Phone, Windows 8 Tablets, and Android devices. The Android devices are the last in the initial build of the framework to be added to the architecture.

This book was perfect for getting me over that hurdle quickly. It starts with a chapter on downloading, installing, and configuring, Eclipse, the Android SDK, and the Android Developer Tools. It also walks you through creating an Android Virtual Device. After failing to get the Android tools to successfully setup up on Windows 8 three times, I decided to set up my development environment on my MacBook, which was one and done.

The book is broken down into four parts. I have listed each one along with the chapters they contain.

I. Tools and Basics
1. Installing the Android SDK and Prerequisites
2. Java for Android
3. The Ingredients of an Android Application
4. Getting Your Application into Users’ Hands
5. Eclipse for Android Software Development

II. About the Android Framework
6. Building a View
7. Fragments and Multiplatform Support
8. Drawing 2D and 3D Graphics
9. Handling and Persisting Data

III. A Skeleton Application for Android
10. A Framework for a Well-Behaved Application
11. Building a User Interface
12. Using Content Providers
13. A Content Provider as a Facade for a RESTful Web Service

IV. Advanced Topics
14. Search
15. Location and Mapping
16. Multimedia
17. Sensors, NFC, Speech, Gestures, and Accessibility
18. Communication, Identity, Sync, and Social Media
19. The Android Native Development Kit (NDK)

As you can see by the chapter's names, the book covers a lot of topics. I found the author covered the topics with enough detail to thoroughly explain the topic at hand.

I liked Chapter 2, Java for Android. Coming from a C# and Objective-C environment, I thought the chapter did a nice job of covering the syntax of Java.

Chapter 3, The Ingredients of an Android Application, is absolutely essential for anyone coming from Windows Phone, Windows Store Apps, iPhone, or iPad development. It does a great job of covering the high-level concepts of programming on the Android Platform. It introduces you the Android language and concepts.

Chapter 5 was a nice touch. The author takes the time to cover what Android programming looks like in Eclipse. I have used the Eclipse Process Framework, TOPCASED, Archi, GOSU, and a few other configurations. It was nice to just have the Android environment explained instead of having to figure it out.

The author has all the examples used in the book available for download. They're very well organized and usable. All of the examples ran without needing any modification. You can import them into Eclipse and hit run. Just make sure you download the code for the second edition. I downloaded the first edition's code initially.

The Android environment is a complex one. At least I found it to be more complex than iOS and .NET. Without this book I would not have gotten very far. The author did a great job of explaining activities, intents, tasks, services, and contents providers early in the book which help me understand the context in which the different elements live.

This book is great for reading from cover to cover as well as using it as a reference. I plan on keeping this book by my side. This book is for anyone looking to get into Android programming or anyone looking for direction on building Android applications with the latest APIs, tools, and best practices.

Programming Android: Java Programming for the New Generation of Mobile Devices

About Tad Anderson
Tad Anderson has been doing Software Architecture for 16 years and Enterprise Architecture for the past few.

Web 2.0 Latest News
Hyper-V Replica is our included asynchronous site-to-site VM replication capability for Windows Server 2012 and our free Hyper-V Server 2012 bare-metal enterprise-grade hypervisor. Using Hyper-V Replica, you can quickly implement a cost-effective disaster recovery plan for your busine...
With Cloud Expo New York | 12th Cloud Expo [June 10-13, 2013] hurtling towards us, let's take a look at the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference coming up June 10-13 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York ...
If the leadership in your organization is mature and has a good track record – rest assured that a risk-mitigated decision to dabble in the public cloud is a vote of confidence in your direction. It's little more than innate human nature to strive to control the environment around us....
The technology infrastructure of today’s business landscape has undergone dramatic shifts in recent years. The consumerization of IT, the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, and of course the cloud have revolutionized the way corporations manage data, complete transactions and commu...
We must bring together the worlds of SOA, BPM, Cloud, REST, and HOA. The secret to getting all these architectural trends to work well together centers on how we deal with state information. We must first separate application state from resource state, and then subsequently take the co...
Subscribe to the World's Most Powerful Newsletters
Subscribe to Our Rss Feeds & Get Your SYS-CON News Live!
Click to Add our RSS Feeds to the Service of Your Choice:
Google Reader or Homepage Add to My Yahoo! Subscribe with Bloglines Subscribe in NewsGator Online
myFeedster Add to My AOL Subscribe in Rojo Add 'Hugg' to Newsburst from CNET News.com Kinja Digest View Additional SYS-CON Feeds
Publish Your Article! Please send it to editorial(at)sys-con.com!

Advertise on this site! Contact advertising(at)sys-con.com! 201 802-3021


SYS-CON Featured Whitepapers
ADS BY GOOGLE