For up-to-date product documentation, see the IBM MobileFirst Foundation Developer Center.

MobileFirst Server

The server side of your mobile app is MobileFirst Server. MobileFirst Server gives you access to features like application management and application security, as well giving your mobile app secure access to our other backend systems through adapters.

MobileFirst Server is the core component that delivers many IBM MobileFirst™ Platform Foundation features, including the following features:

• Application management
• Application security, including authenticating devices and users and verifying application authenticity
• Secure access to backend services through adapters
• Update Cordova app Web resources with Direct Update
• Push notifications and push subscriptions
• App analytics

We need to use MobileFirst Server throughout your app's lifecycle from development and test through to production deployment and maintenance. A preconfigured server is available for you to use when you develop your app. For information about the MobileFirst Development Server to use when you develop your app, see Set up the MobileFirst Development Server.

MobileFirst Server consists of the following components. All of these components are also included in the MobileFirst Development Server. In simple cases, they are running on the same application server, but in a production or test environment, the components can be run on different application servers. For information about possible topologies for these MobileFirst Server components, see Topologies and network flows.

MobileFirst Operations Console and the MobileFirst Server administration service

The operations console is a web interface that we can use to view and edit the MobileFirst Server configurations. We can also access the MobileFirst Analytics Console from here.

The context root for the operations console in the development server is /mfpconsole.

The administration service is the main entry point for managing your apps. We can access the administration service through a web-based interface with the MobileFirst Operations Console. We can also access the administration service with the mfpadm command-line tool or the administration service REST API.

MobileFirst runtime

The runtime is the main entry point for a MobileFirst client app. The runtime is also the default authorization server for the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation OAuth implementation.

In advanced and rare cases, we can have multiple instances of a device runtime in a single MobileFirst Server. Each instance has its own context root. The context root is used to display the name of a runtime in the operations console. Use multiple instances in cases where you require different server-level configuration such as secret keys for keystore.

If you have only one instance of a device runtime in MobileFirst Server, you do not typically need to know the runtime context root. For example, when you register an application to a runtime with the mfpdev app register command when the MobileFirst Server has only one runtime, the application is registered automatically to that runtime.

MobileFirst Server push service

The push service is your main access point for push-related operations like push notifications and push subscriptions. To contact the push services, client apps use the URL of the runtime but replace the context root with /mfppush. We can configure and manage the push service with the MobileFirst Operations Console or the push service REST API.

If you run the push services in a separate application server from the MobileFirst runtime, we must route the push service traffic to the correct application server with your HTTP server.

MobileFirst Analytics and the MobileFirst Analytics Console

IBM MobileFirst Analytics is an optional component that provides a scalable analytics feature that we can access from the MobileFirst Operations Console. This analytics feature lets you search for patterns, problems and platform usage statistics across logs and events that are collected from devices, apps, and servers.

From the MobileFirst Operations Console, we can define filters to enable or disable data forwarding to the analytics service. We can also filter the type of information that is sent. On the client side, we can use the client-side log capture API to send events and data to the analytics server. For more information about the client-side log capture API, see Logger SDK.

After you install and configure MobileFirst Server into the topology that we want, any further configuration of MobileFirst Server and its applications can be done entirely through any of the following methods:

• The MobileFirst Operations Console
• The MobileFirst Server administration service REST API
• The mfpadm command-line tool

After the initial installation and configuration, you do not need to access any application server console or interface to configure IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation.

When we deploy your app to production, we can deploy your app to the following MobileFirst Server production environments:

• On-premises.

  For information about installing and configuring MobileFirst Server for your on-premises environment, see Install IBM MobileFirst Platform Server.

• On the cloud

  For information, see Deploy MobileFirst Server to the cloud

Parent topic: Development concepts and overview