As I briefly covered in the previous section, the current J2ME architecture provide two distinct configuration, the CDC (Connected Device Configuration) and CLDC (Connected Limited Device Configuration).
The CDC
Built for larger devices such as digital TV set-top-boxes and PDAs (typically with multyple megabytes of memory), the CDC is the bigger brother of the J2ME configurations. It contains a single profile (the Fooundation profile) as well as high-performance virtual machine known as the Compact Virtual Machine (CVM). The Java language implementation and the API pretty much have all the power of J2SE.
Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunatelly, the CDC is not available on the platform where the vast majority of micro-game players are -mobile phone- so it's about as useful a blind sumo wretler in a midget bar brawl. If you want to develop games for the major audiences out here, then you 're interested in those "limited" devices.
The CLDC
The CLDC is all about micro devices, especially mobile phones. It essentially define a standard used by device manufacturers to implement a java run-time environtment. Third party developers, following this same standard, are then confident of the platform on which their software can run.
Developed as part of the Java Community Process (JSR-30), the CLDC configuration effects many aspects of Java development and delivery, while include :
- Target device characteristic
- The security model
- Application management
- Language differences
- JVM differences
- Included class libraries
Thankfully, the CLDC wasn't developed in isolation, some of the most influential companies involved in the micro device industry were involved in the Java Community Process expert group (JSR-30), which was responsible for the development of the specifications. Reading like a who's who of the micro hardware industry, the list of companies involved includes :
- Amercian online
- Bull
- Ericsson
- Fujitsu
- Matsushita
- Mitsubishi
- Motorola
- Nokia
- NTT DoCoMo
- Oracle
- Palm Computing
- RIM (Research In Motion)
- Samsung
- Sharp
- Siemens
- Sony
- Sun Microsystems
- Symbian