general question

hi.
i´m absolute new to symbian os and programming things like this. until 
now i read some doc´s and papers and tried to find out some information 
by searching the internet but not succesful.

my intention is (task of technical college):
- have a connection between a personal computer and an smartphone/mobile 
(with symbian os installed)
- get access to contact data on the device from the pc by a webinterface
- fetch the desired data and put it in a database on the pc

is this possible? were did i get information about how to get along with 
my task?
(what about devices with older or without versions of symbian os?)

Hi Daniel

Yes its possible. Licensee SDK for the phone you are targeting is probably a
good place to start. There are lots of possible approaches.

There are two parts to the problem, getting the information from contacts,
and the connectivity issues.

Getting the information from contacts is easy - you'd have a client running
on the phone to either generate vCards or to extract information from the
Contacts database directly.
Look up versit in the SDK. This is a parser that allows you to export VCARD
information for one or all contacts (which you can then send to PC). The
good thing about VCARD is that it is a standard, so you may well be able to
find some PC end software to display it.#

VCARD doesn't necessarily export ALL information (ie will miss stuff that is
not in the Vcard standard on some phones), so if you really need to dump
*everything* you could use contacts database directly to dump its
information.

The second part is getting the information to or from the phone. Symbian
supports a BSD style socket interface. Look up RSocket on your SDK. So your
client could accept requests from server and send the data you need on
request. THere are also HTTP APIs, which you might be able to use.

One other alternative is to use SyncML. The protocol already supports
Contacts database information transfer to a remote server - so all you'd
need to worry about would be setting up an HTML interface on the server so
you can query your syncML database from your pC

The issues you need to be aware of is that Symbian does not have
"universal"
support for tethered (direct PC to Phone) connectivity. By which I mean that
Nokia PC to phone connection is not IP based so AFAIK you can't do IP based
connectivity to the phone over their USB cable - so you're better off doing
this Over the air if you want it to run on all phones. RSocket exists in all
versions of Symbian OS. Versit also as far as I know.

Hope that is enough to get you started.

Cheerio
H

"daniel reith" <daniel.reith@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:PfKI41R7GHA.408@UKCOL01WWEB01.symbian.intra...
> hi.
> i´m absolute new to symbian os and programming things like this. until
> now i read some doc´s and papers and tried to find out some information
> by searching the internet but not succesful.
>
> my intention is (task of technical college):
> - have a connection between a personal computer and an smartphone/mobile
> (with symbian os installed)
> - get access to contact data on the device from the pc by a webinterface
> - fetch the desired data and put it in a database on the pc
>
> is this possible? were did i get information about how to get along with
> my task?
> (what about devices with older or without versions of symbian os?)
>
> i would be grateful for any information or tips how to begin.

Hi Daniel, Hi Hamish,

Hamish Willee wrote:
> The second part is getting the information to or from the phone. Symbian
> supports a BSD style socket interface. Look up RSocket on your SDK. So
your
> client could accept requests from server and send the data you need on
> request. THere are also HTTP APIs, which you might be able to use.

Daniel, if you are using TCP Sockets as Hamish suggested you should
first examine if your mobile operator is using NAT. If it uses NAT to
translate the private IP adresses from the phones into a public one, you
won't be able to connect to your handset from the Internet that easily.


regards,

Hi Frank

Thanks. What do you suggest if this is the case? I'm cursed with lots of
general knowledge on the subject and no real experience.

Regards
H


"Frank Felgner" <symbian@tschi.de> wrote in message
news:mgRDN7U8GHA.2096@UKCOL01WWEB01.symbian.intra...
> Hi Daniel, Hi Hamish,
>
> Hamish Willee wrote:
> > The second part is getting the information to or from the phone.
Symbian
> > supports a BSD style socket interface. Look up RSocket on your SDK.
So
your
> > client could accept requests from server and send the data you need
on
> > request. THere are also HTTP APIs, which you might be able to use.
>
> Daniel, if you are using TCP Sockets as Hamish suggested you should
> first examine if your mobile operator is using NAT. If it uses NAT to
> translate the private IP adresses from the phones into a public one, you
> won't be able to connect to your handset from the Internet that easily.
>
>
> regards,
> Frank

And almost all operators have NAT installed so you can't easily get in 
from outside. You have to get out from inside and keep the connection open.

Or you could use one of the several NAT traversal techniques or use an 
intermediary routing server.

AMK

Hamish Willee wrote:
> Hi Frank
> 
> Thanks. What do you suggest if this is the case? I'm cursed with lots of
> general knowledge on the subject and no real experience.
> 
> Regards
> H
> 
> 
> "Frank Felgner" <symbian@tschi.de> wrote in message
> news:mgRDN7U8GHA.2096@UKCOL01WWEB01.symbian.intra...
>> Hi Daniel, Hi Hamish,
>>
>> Hamish Willee wrote:
>>> The second part is getting the information to or from the phone.
Symbian
>>> supports a BSD style socket interface. Look up RSocket on your SDK.
So
> your
>>> client could accept requests from server and send the data you need
on
>>> request. THere are also HTTP APIs, which you might be able to use.
>> Daniel, if you are using TCP Sockets as Hamish suggested you should
>> first examine if your mobile operator is using NAT. If it uses NAT to
>> translate the private IP adresses from the phones into a public one,
you
>> won't be able to connect to your handset from the Internet that
easily.
>>
>>
>> regards,
>> Frank
>