Why use IBM Worklight if it ultimately uses PhoneGap?

iphone html cordova ibm-mobilefirst
iVipS picture iVipS · Sep 13, 2012 · Viewed 22.3k times · Source

Actually i have to build a cross platform application(for iphone and android only) and the client is emphasizing to use IBM Worklight for this. After searching about Worklight i came to know that it internally uses PhoneGap(Apache Cordova). Now my question is if worklight internally uses phonegap then why not directly use phonegap. I need your advice on this. Please suggest the thing that separates worklight from phonegap. Thanks in advance.

Answer

HarryH picture HarryH · Dec 26, 2012

IBM Worklight is a full platform for development. There are a lot of things that you can do even within Worklight that you can't do alone with a PhoneGap library like access common controls more native to the device (Options Menu, busy indicator, tabbars, etc). Some things you have to find plugins for. The newest version of IBM Worklight uses PhoneGap 2.2. I could probably go on for awhile, but check out my blog about the differences in a comparison view.

http://www.open-logix.com/enterprise-mobility-blog/ibm-worklight-and-phonegap-comparison/?

Other things worth mentioning:

The server is also a big portion which does centralized back-end connectivity with adapters, used for offline encrypted storage, unified push notifications and SMS delivery, and more.

The management console works with the server to provide a MAM solution. So you can force update/disable applications, manage versions, view some device statistics and monitor pushes.

The IDE works in conjunction with the Native SDK's and IDE's. So if you are building for Android, it will build an Android project to compile and export within the same IDE. For iPhone, it creates all the project layers for an XCODE project. You may have to tweak some settings in xcode to make sure it compiles right, but I generally haven't had issues.

The Mobile Browser simulator is nice for testing web code with PhoneGap capability testing within the browser as well.

Shell coding is integrated and you can create a common shell for your App brand.

The new WYSIWYG is pretty nice as well and provides common HTML support plus jQuery Mobile components and/or dojo mobile.

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