+

Search Tips | Advanced Search

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


Product components

IBM MobileFirst™ Platform Foundation consists of the following components:


MobileFirst Platform CLI

We can use the IBM MobileFirst Platform Command Line Interface (CLI) to develop and manage applications, in addition to using the IBM MobileFirst Platform Operations Console. Some aspects of the MobileFirst development process must be done with the CLI.

The commands, all prefaced with mfpdev, support the following types of tasks:

For more information, see The MobileFirst command-line interface (CLI)


MobileFirst Server

The MobileFirst Server provides secured backend connectivity, application management, push notification support and analytics capabilities and monitoring to MobileFirst applications. It is not an application server in the Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) sense. It acts as a container for IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation application packages, and is in fact a collection of web applications, optionally packaged as an EAR (enterprise archive) file that run on top of traditional application servers.

MobileFirst Server integrates into the enterprise environment and uses existing resources and infrastructure. This integration is based on adapters that are server-side software components responsible for channeling back-end enterprise systems and cloud-based services to the user device. We can use adapters to retrieve and update data from information sources, and to allow users to perform transactions and start other services and applications.


Client-side runtime components

IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation provides client-side runtime code that embeds server functionality within the target environment of deployed apps. These runtime client APIs are libraries that are integrated into the locally stored app code. We use them to add MobileFirst features to our client apps. The APIs and libraries can be installed with the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation Developer Kit or we can download them from repositories for our development platform.


MobileFirst Operations Console

The MobileFirst Operations Console is used for the control and management of the mobile applications. The MobileFirst Operations Console is also an entry point to learn about IBM MobileFirst Platform development. From the console, we can download code examples, tools, and SDKs.

We can use the MobileFirst Operations Console for the following tasks:

See MobileFirst Operations Console overview.

See Administering MobileFirst applications


IBM MobileFirst Analytics

IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation includes a scalable operational analytics feature that is accessible from the MobileFirst Operations Console. The analytics feature enables enterprises to search across logs and events that are collected from devices, apps, and servers for patterns, problems, and platform usage statistics.

The data for operational analytics includes the following sources:

See Analytics and Logger.


Application Center

With the Application Center, we can share mobile applications that are under development within your organization in a single repository of mobile applications. Development team members can use the Application Center to share applications with members of the team. This process facilitates collaboration between all the people who are involved in the development of an application.

Your company can typically use the Application Center as follows:

  1. The development team creates a version of an application.

  2. The development team uploads the application to the Application Center, enters its description, and asks the extended team to review and test it.

  3. When the new version of the application is available, a tester runs the Application Center installer application, which is the mobile client. Then, the tester locates this new version of the application, installs it on their mobile device, and tests it.

  4. After the tests, the tester rates the application and submits feedback, which is visible to the developer from the Application Center console.

The Application Center is aimed for private use within a company, and we can target some mobile applications to specific groups of users. We can use the Application Center as an enterprise application store.

See Application Center


IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation System Pattern

With the MobileFirst Platform Pattern, we can deploy MobileFirst Server on IBM® PureApplication® System or IBM PureApplication Service on SoftLayer®. With these patterns, administrators and corporations can respond to changes in the business environment by taking advantage of on-premises Cloud technologies. This approach simplifies the deployment process, and improves the operational efficiency to cope with increased mobile demand. The demand accelerates iteration of solutions that exceed traditional demand cycles. Using MobileFirst Platform Pattern also gives access to best practices and built-in expertise, such as built-in scaling policies.