BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
In the figures which illustrate example embodiments of this invention:
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a wireless communication device including virtual machine software;
FIG. 2A illustrates the organization of exemplary virtual machine software at the wireless communication device of FIG. 1;
FIG. 2B further illustrates the organization of exemplary virtual machine software at the wireless communication device of FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 illustrates an operating environment for the wireless communication device of FIG. 1;
FIG. 4 illustrates the structure of example application definitions used by the device of FIG. 1;
FIG. 5 schematically illustrates the formation of application definition files at a transaction server of FIG. 3 from a master definition file;
FIG. 6 schematically illustrates the transaction server of FIG. 3 in greater detail;
FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating the exchange of sample messages passed between a wireless communication device, transaction server and application server;
FIGS. 8-10 illustrate operation performed at a wireless communication device under control of virtual machine software of FIGS. 2A and 2B;
FIG. 11 schematically illustrates the wireless communication device operating environment of FIG. 3 with an exemplary Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool which may be used to develop master definition files in a manner exemplary of an embodiment of the present invention;
FIG. 12 schematically illustrates the RAD tool of FIG. 11 in greater detail;
FIG. 13 illustrates an exemplary graphical user interface (GUI) of the RAD tool of FIG. 12;
FIG. 14 illustrates a project explorer portion of the RAD tool GUI of FIG. 13 in which exemplary global functions are declared;
FIG. 15 illustrates a login screen for a Pocket PC wireless computing device defined in the project explorer of FIG. 14;
FIG. 16 illustrates a French language version of the login screen of FIG. 15 that is also defined in the project explorer of FIG. 14;
FIGS. 17A-17B textually illustrate a master definition Document Object Model (DOM) tree that is maintained in the memory of the RAD tool of FIG. 12 during mobile application design to represent the screens of FIGS. 15 and 16; and
FIGS. 18A-18B illustrate a master definition file which results from the serialization of the DOM tree of FIGS. 17A-17B.