WAP

What is WAP?

The wireless industry came up with the idea of WAP. The point of this standard was to show internet contents on wireless clients, like mobile phones.

• WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol
• WAP is an application communication protocol
• WAP is used to access services and information
• WAP is inherited from Internet standards
• WAP is for handheld devices such as mobile phones
• WAP is a protocol designed for micro browsers
• WAP enables the creating of web applications for mobile devices.
• WAP uses the mark-up language WML (not HTML)
• WML is defined as an XML 1.0 application

The Wireless Application Protocol

The WAP protocol is the leading standard for information services on wireless terminals like digital mobile phones.

The WAP standard is based on Internet standards (HTML, XML and TCP/IP). It consists of a WML language specification, a WMLScript specification, and a Wireless Telephony Application Interface (WTAI) specification.

WAP is published by the WAP Forum, founded in 1997 by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Unwired Planet. Forum members now represent over 90% of the global handset market, as well as leading infrastructure providers, software developers and other organizations.

WAP Micro Browsers

To fit into a small wireless terminal, WAP uses a Micro Browser.

A Micro Browser is a small piece of software that makes minimal demands on hardware, memory and CPU. It can display information written in a restricted mark-up language called WML.

The Micro Browser can also interpret a reduced version of JavaScript called WMLScript.

What is WML?

WML stands for Wireless Markup Language. It is a mark-up language inherited from HTML, but WML is based on XML, so it is much stricter than HTML.

WML is used to create pages that can be displayed in a WAP browser. Pages in WML are called DECKS. Decks are constructed as a set of CARDS.

What is WMLScript?

WML uses WMLScript to run simple code on the client. WMLScript is a light JavaScript language. However, WML scripts are not embedded in the WML pages. WML pages only contains references to script URLs. WML scripts need to be compiled into byte code on a server before they can run in a WAP browser.

Examples of WAP use

• Checking train table information
• Ticket purchase
• Flight check in
• Viewing traffic information
• Checking weather conditions
• Looking up stock values
• Looking up phone numbers
• Looking up addresses
• Looking up sport results

The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum developed the de-facto world standard for wireless information and telephony services on digital mobile phones and other wireless terminals. The WAP Forum published an open, global wireless protocol specification based on existing Internet standards, such as XML and IP, for all wireless networks.

The WAP Forum has consolidated into the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and does no longer exists as an independent organization.

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is the leading industry forum for developing market driven, interoperable mobile service enablers.

OMA was formed in June 2002 by nearly 200 companies including the world’s leading mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies and content and service providers. The fact that the whole value chain is represented in OMA marks a change in the way specifications for mobile services are done. Rather than keeping the traditional approach of organizing activities around "technology silos", with different standards and specifications bodies representing different mobile technologies, working independently, OMA is aiming to consolidate into one organization all specification activities in the service enabler space.