Richard Rodger - Beginning Building Mobile Application Development in the Cloud

CONTENTS

Beginning Mobile Application Development in the Cloud

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Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-03469-9

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ISBN: 978-1-118-20335-4 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-20334-7 (ebk)

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For Orla, Saorla, Lola and Ruadhn, all my love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RICHARD RODGER is the founder of Chartaca.com , a mobile analytics company built on the PhoneGap and Node.js technologies. He has led the successful development of several large scale enterprise mobile services, particularly in the news and media industry. He was previously CTO of FeedHenry.com , a JavaScript-focused cloud hosting platform for mobile apps, also based on PhoneGap and Node.js. As a senior researcher at the Telecommunications Software & Services Group at the Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland, he led the research team that built the core platform that became FeedHenry. Richard is also the founder of Ricebridge.com , a company providing Java components for high volume data processing.

Richard has been a long-time participant in the Java open source community, and more recently in the Node.js community, contributing several modules for database integration and systems monitoring.

Richard has degrees in Computer Science from the Waterford Institute of Technology and Mathematics and Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

CREDITS

ACQUISITIONS EDITOR

Paul Reese

PROJECT EDITOR

Kelly Talbot

TECHNICAL EDITORS

Matthew Baxter-Reynolds

Dale Cruse

PRODUCTION EDITOR

Becca Anderson

COPY EDITORS

Kitty Wilson

Kim Cofer

EDITORIAL MANAGER

Mary Beth Wakefield

FREELANCER EDITORIAL MANAGER

Rosemarie Graham

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF MARKETING

David Mayhew

MARKETING MANAGER

Ashley Zurcher

BUSINESS MANAGER

Amy Knies

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Tim Tate

VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE GROUP PUBLISHER

Richard Swadley

VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER

Neil Edde

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Jim Minatel

PROJECT COORDINATOR, COVER

Katie Crocker

PROOFREADER

Jen Larsen, Word One New York

INDEXER

Robert Swanson

COVER DESIGNER

LeAndra Young

COVER IMAGE

AnastasiyaShanhina

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THERE IS AN ENORMOUS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN talking about technology and writing about it. It is surprisingly difficult to place your thoughts on paper in coherent form. I do not think anyone can ever claim to have a written a book by themselves. Behind every book is a broad and deep support structure, without which no author would ever make it to the finish line.

I am deeply grateful to my wife Orla, and my children, Saorla, Lola and Ruadhn. I missed you. You were always unconditionally there for me and gave me the strength to write this book. I am also very grateful to my parents, Hanish and Noreen, and Orlas parents, Noel and Kay. Thank you for helping us keep things together. Lauren, my sister, thank you for your words of encouragement. You are always thinking of us. And thank you, Alaister and Conor, you always believed in me.

I was delighted, in the Summer of 2010, to receive a call from Paul Reese at Wiley, inviting me to think about writing a book on the convergence of mobile apps and cloud computing. Ive built two companies on this idea, and its only getting started! Thank you, Paul, for that call and your patience as I juggled work and writing.

A very heartfelt thank you to Kelly Talbot, my editor and guide. It is an absolute pleasure to work with such a great professional. Thank you for getting me through my first book.

Thank you, too, to the other members of the team, Matthew Baxter-Reynolds and Dale Cruse, for your astute technical input, and Kitty Wilson for so much detailed work improving my prose. This book is far better for your efforts. All remaining errors in text and code are mine alone.

And thank you to all those in my professional life, colleagues and customers alike. You have helped me learn and grow. There would be nothing to write without you.