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Itgel Ganbold
Professor Deby Dagher
UWRT 1102-400
April 08, 2015
Question Mark?
Our world is changing day by day because of technology. It is hard to imagine todays
life without technology and specially smartphone. I cannot live without smartphone! Have you
ever heard or said that statement? The average person can survive three minutes without air,
three days without water, and forty days without food. How long can you survive without
smartphone?
Since the smartphone is one of the most popular electronic devices in the world, what
makes it so special in popularity? Is the way you can place and receive phone calls with it? This
is the thing that make it a phone. However, this is not what make a smart phone as special as it is.
The apps that people can download onto smartphones make it truly special. So, my question is
How to develop a mobile app with server based technology?
To find an answer for my question is complicated because to develop a mobile app with
server side technology is not a one thing. It is a whole complex thing but I do not know how
complex it is and how to start. Last a few hours, I have surfed over the internet to find out where
to start. Finally, I get really interesting peer reviewed article which is related to my question. In
this article, the author elaborate RESTful Web Services improve the efficiency of data transfer
of a whole-farm simulator accessed by Android smartphones. The article shows me the three
core things about an app with server based technology. Database, Server side and Client side are
three core principles that I need to understand to develop app. What is Database Management

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System (DBMS)? What kind of technology do I need use on the server side? These are the
questions it raises for me.
Here is what this person whose name is Margaret Rouse have said about DBMS If the
database is a file of information, then the DBMS is the file folders, the file labels and the file
cabinet. From my perspective, database is a place where we can store data, and DBMS is a
collection of software which we can work with databases. I have found an amazing book about
database. The name of the book is Expert MySQL. If have learnt these things from this book.
Database uses Structured Query Language (SQL). By using this language, every
application stores their data on database. Database could be anywhere in the world. Database has
two different types. One is centralized database. Another one is distributed database. Basic
difference between these two is number of databases. Centralized database has one database but
it is slow because whole network traffic focused on one network. On the other side, distributed
database has two or more databases that separates network traffic but those databases take time
to synchronize their data with each other. Now lets talk a little further about DBMS. There are
four types of DBMS that are Navigational DBMS, Network DBMS, Relational DBMS and
Object Oriented Relational DBMS. First, Navigational DMBS is based on hierarchical that is
similar to tree but this type of DBMS barely uses nowadays. Second, Network DBMS supports
many to many relationships that usually results complex database structures. Third, Relational
DBMS defines database relationships in forms of tables. This is the most popular DBMS in the
world. Last one is Object Oriented Relational DBMS that stores data in form of object that has to
have attributes. Based on what I learnt, I designed the database for my app. While I was
designing, I figure out about database normalization which reduces the data redundancy.

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What kind of technology do I need use on the server side? I went to Mohamed Shehab
who is associate professor of software and information systems to find an answer for my
question. He said I had better to use RESTful API which is really convenient way to transfer and
share data between client and server. It raises me another questions. How to make a connection
between server and database? What is RESTful API and how to use it? Professor Shehab guided
me to the right direction. At that time, we did not have time to talk about all of those things. He
said I need to learn about JDBC to connect database with server and JSON to produce and
consumer data on the server side. It raises me again more questions. What are JDBC and JSON?
Here is a description about JDBC in Oracle web site The JDBC API is a Java API that
can access any kind of tabular data, especially data stored in a Relational Database. Now it
makes more sense, and it seems JDBC is just a connector to Relational Database. However, there
are still more questions. I have not found any good resource about RESTful API and JSON yet.
Here is a peer reviewed article about RESTful API. The author said The Materials
Project RESTful API allows users to directly access Materials Project data via the Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and provides an efficient way for users to programmatically query for
materials information instead of relying on browser-based interfaces. This is what I think about
RESTful API. It seems RESTful API is nothing special and it is just web service which is really
easy to use. After I have read the whole article, I understood better about RESTful API and
JSON. This is what I understood. Materials API changes the way of communication between
applications. In this view, MongoDB, NoSQL or MySQL which are databases store all the data
in the back end. The Materials API uses Representational State Transfer (REST) which is an
architectural style that makes API simple to use for other client side apps. HTTP has methods
POST, GET and so on which use to retrieve and create the data. In this case, data could be called

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media. There are several of media types that are XML, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and
so on. JSON is more readable for human which is simple to understand because XML is more
readable for machines.

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Questions
I cannot live without smartphone! Have you ever heard or said that statement?
How long can you survive without smartphone?
What makes app so special in popularity?
Is the way you can place and receive phone calls with it?
What is Database Management System (DBMS)?
What kind of technology do I need use on the server side?
What kind of technology do I need use on the server side?
How to make a connection between server and database?
What is RESTful API and how to use it?
What are JDBC and JSON?

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References
Mateos, C, A Zunino, M Arroqui, and C Machado. "Restful Web Services Improve the

Efficiency of Data Transfer of a

Whole-Farm Simulator Accessed by Android Smartphones." Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. 87 (2012): 14-18. Print.
Bell, Charles A. Expert Mysql. Berkeley, CA: Apress, 2012. Internet resource.
SearchSQLServer,. 'What Is Database Management System (DBMS)? - Definition From Whatis.Com'. N. p., 2015.
Ong, Shyue P, Shreyas Cholia, Anubhav Jain, Miriam Brafman, Dan Gunter, Gerbrand Ceder, and Kristin A. Persson. "The
Materials Application Programming Interface (api): a Simple, Flexible and Efficient Api for Materials Data Based on
Representational State Transfer (rest) Principles." Computational Materials Science. 97 (2015): 209-215. Print.
JDBC Introduction (The Java Tutorials > JDBC(TM) Database Access)'. N. p., 2015.
Kalali, Masoud, and Bhakti Mehta. Developing Restful Services with Jax-Rs 2.0, Websockets, and Json. Birmingham: Packt
Publishing, 2013. Internet resource.