Blackberry RAD (Rapid Application Deployment) is a method of connecting to a web service and making use of the facilities on offer. If all you want is for a user to visit your website, RAD and all the facilities it offers may not be for you; there are simple means of achieving this. Think of RAD as the means by which you can interface the runtime environment (operating system) of your Blackberry smartphones with the back-end web services, making the application available to the phone user.

So how does all this work? Well, you’ll need an Internet-based web service to communicate with your Blackberry smartphone. This will have been created using Web Services for Java (from Sun Micro systems) or Web Services for .NET (from Microsoft). Once you’ve created the web service, your Blackberry needs a means to communicate with the service and exchange the information for the application to actually work.

This is where the RAD runtime environment, called the “BlackBerry® Mobile Data System (BlackBerry® MDS) Runtime” comes into play. This is installed on the smartphone either locally by the user, OTA (Over The Air) or by a company administrator. Once you have this installed on the Blackberry, you can run the application developed for the smartphone called the Blackberry MDS Application to complete the loop and start communicating with your web service.

You would have any number of Blackberry MDS applications, depending on what web services you have designed and with which you want to exchange information. These applications would have been created using the standalone tool BlackBerry MDS Studio or the BlackBerry Plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio. Both tools offer advanced GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) that enable fast and efficient design of your application, to give the user the best possible result.

Blackberry RAD (Rapid Application Deployment) gives the developer the best of both worlds: it is simple and therefore quick to learn, but also powerful in providing the means to produce effective applications. Combine the ability to communicate with both web services developed under Web Services for Java and Web Services for .NET and you have real flexibility.

Blackberry addicts are quickly familiar with the new concept and enjoy the additional versatility that the use of RAD provides to promote better communication for both business and private use, reaching faster and more targeted communication levels and producing better productivity, which which generates higher and faster gains with prolific use. .