Mobile Foundation Blog

Google I/O 2018 announced a new publishing format for Android Developers - Android App Bundle....more

Google I/O 2019 brought in a flurry of new feature announcements. One of the less publicised feature was that of in-app updates for Android apps. While the Google Play Store continues to be the channel for delivering app updates, in-app updates allow developers to prompt users to consume an app update from the Play Store without leaving their app....more

IBM Support Portal is the single destination for all your support requirements related to IBM products.The all-new experience offered by the support portal makes it easier to lookup for APARs, PMRs, support notes, products, migration documents, and so on. You can also choose to be subscribed to receive notifications for select topics of interest for the IBM product of your choice....more

Update 31 Jul 2019: A new set of JSONStore SDKs have been published ( Android Native ibmmobilefirstplatformfoundationjsonstore v8.0.2019072505, Cordova cordova-plugin-mfp-jsonstore v8.0.2019072908 for Mobile Foundation v8 and iFix 7.1.0.0-MFPF-IF201907301558 for Mobile Foundation v7.1) for 64-bit compatibility. These are enhanced from the previous release and do not require the intermediate build in 32-bit mode to ensure data retention. Use these versions of the SDK to ensure JSONStore data retention across app upgrades irrespective of the mode and the iFix level of the SDK in the previously built app....more

Google has announced the next version of Android, which is Android Q. The developer preview of Android Q was launched in March 2019 and has been available for a while now for testing, development, and feedback. Android Q introduces a variety of new features and capabilities for end users, which gives security enhancements (such as improved biometric authentication dialogs, improved fallback support for device credentials), TLS 1.3 support, connectivity, system-wide dark mode, permissions usage, built-in screen record features and many more....more

IBM Mobile Foundation v8 is now supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.1 for Power, Big Endian ....more

We are happy to announce that IBM Digital App Builder 8.0.0 which was launched as a beta release in Dec 2018, is now generally available. This tool can be used to rapidly build multi-channel apps with AI capabilities that can be deployed on Mobile Foundation runtime. Customers can now download the binaries by logging into passport advantage (CC151EN for Mac and CC152EN for Windows 10). For others who want to try out this tool, download the binaries from our git repo....more

We are pleased to announce the official support of Ionic 4 in IBM Mobile Foundation v8.0. This support is introduced from iFix 8.0.0.0-MFPF-IF201903250706 onwards....more

We are pleased to announce the continuous delivery (CD) update 5 for Mobile Foundation v8.0....more

We are pleased to announce the official support of Oracle, MySQL & PostGreSQL databases for IBM Mobile Foundation v8.0 on IBM Cloud Private (ICP). The support for deploying IBM Mobile Foundation artifacts on ICP 3.1 is from iFix IF201902040810 onwards. Steps to achieve the Oracle, MySQL and PostGreSQL can be found here...more

CoreML is a framework by Apple which helps to integrate machine learning models into your IOS apps. The model can execute on the device and is optimized for performance, minimizes memory footprint and reduces power consumption. Adding ML to mobile apps opens up new capabilities for client side mobile applications....more

This post focuses on High Availability (HA) of Mobile Foundation on IBM Cloud Private, particularly about having Highly Available Master Nodes in the ICP topology. We will discuss about the HA setup with 3 Masters and 2 Worker Nodes topology. One of the three master nodes acts like a boot node here. This setup also considers having the proxy on the master nodes itself....more

We are excited to announce that IBM Mobile Foundation for Developers v8.0 is now available for IBM Cloud Private. Developers can now try out Mobile Foundation enterprise capabilities to build next-generation cognitive and engaging apps and rapidly innovate by standardizing on a modern and scalable cloud platform. The Developer package includes Docker images and Helm Charts to deploy the following components: Mobile Foundation server Mobile Analytics server...more

IBM is pleased to announce that MobileFirst Foundation v8.0 is tested and certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.1 Power System, Big Endian....more

In Apple’s WWDC 2018, Apple introduced a new feature called Siri Shorcut for iOS 12 which allows to define and access the frequently used tasks of an application using Siri....more

We are pleased to announce the official support of IBM Mobile Foundation v8.0 on IBM Cloud Private (ICP) 3.1.1. The support for deploying IBM Mobile Foundation artifacts on ICP 3.1.1 is from iFix **8.0.0.0-MFPF-** onwards....more

Mobile Foundation runtime supports relational databases such as IBM DB2, Oracle and MySQL.Database is required to store the data required for the running of Mobile Foundation applications. See Internal runtime databases, for more information on the database tables used by Mobile Foundation server....more

We are pleased to announce the continuous delivery (CD) update 4 for Mobile Foundation v8.0....more

MobileFirst Platform now supports the HTTP/2 based APNs Push Notifications....more

Deprecation Note: This blog post is deprecated. Digital App Builder is now generally available. For more information, see here....more

The feature of automated sync in JSONStore is available in native iOS, native Android, Cordova iOS and Cordova Android platforms. Details on enabling this feature can be found here and in this post. This blog post provides details regarding the performance of the JSONStore automated sync feature on Android and iOS devices....more

One of the major changes introduced with IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation v8.0 is the concept of SecurityChecks. A security check is a server-side entity that implements the security logic for protecting server-side application resources. In MFP 8.0, a security check can only be implemented as a Java adapter....more

The MobileFirst security framework is based on the OAuth 2.0 protocol. According to this protocol, a resource can be protected by a scope that defines the required permissions for accessing the resource. To access a protected resource, the client must provide a matching access token, which encapsulates the scope of the authorization that is granted to the client. A MobileFirst access token is a digitally signed entity that describes the authorization permissions of a client. After the client’s authorization request for a specific scope is granted, and the client is authenticated, the authorization server’s token endpoint sends the client an......more

Here are some of the best practices, which are good to be considered for achieving performance and scalability of MobileFirst Platform Foundation (MFP) v8.0. Many of these recommendations apply to cloud and on-premise alike:...more

We are pleased to announce the continuous delivery (CD) update 3 for Mobile Foundation v8.0....more

IBM Mobile Foundation deployments on ICP has https enabled by default with NodePort. To configure using your own security certificates (for both NodePort and ingress) follow the steps below.Case A : During setting up of Mobile Foundation on ICP...more

This blog focuses on setting up of MobileFirst Server running on an IBM Cloud Private (ICP) on SoftLayer VMs or baremetal hosts. The topology that is targeted is an ICP Host with 2 Workers and one master/boot node as represented in the following diagram....more

When Mobile Foundation (MFP) Server Helm chart is deployed on IBM Cloud Private it uses basicRegistry along with various other configuration details. This user registry is good enough for basic development and testing environments, but for production scenarios LDAP registry is used....more

During the deployment of the Mobile Foundation Helm charts on the IBM Cloud Private various configuration details are supplied. There are several cases, these configuration settings available on the deployed Mobile Foundation on the ICP needs customizations post deployment especially when the system runs in production scenarios or during the tests....more

We are pleased to announce the official support of IBM Mobile Foundation v8.0 on IBM Cloud Private (ICP) 3.1. The support for deploying IBM Mobile Foundation artifacts on ICP 3.1 is from iFix 8.0.0.0-MFPF-IF201810040631 onwards....more

Last year we announced the ability for clients to deploy their existing Mobile Foundation v8.0 license using scripts on IBM Cloud Kubernetes clusters for workloads on public Cloud. This year we announced the ability to deploy Mobile Foundation v8.0 using Docker image and Helm charts on IBM Cloud Private for workloads on-premise. These deployment approaches were different though.However, many organizations are increasingly adopting a Hybrid cloud strategy to optimize the benefits of the different cloud environments for different workloads. Clients want the ability to easily move workloads between Public and Private cloud. For example, many clients want to develop and......more

IntroductionDevOps is a practice used by enterprises for faster delivery of software and to improve the time taken for go to market. The DevOps pipeline for Mobile Foundation on IBM Cloud Private helps in automating tasks that are required to set up a continuous delivery of mobile apps. For Mobile Foundation on ICP, the tasks such as deploying Mobile Foundation (MF) on ICP, building and deploying apps and adapters to MF on ICP, testing apps and adapters, and deleting and updating the Mobile Foundation deployments on ICP needs to be automated....more

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Follow the steps in this post to use Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) in your android app with MobileFirst Platform v7.1 Android Push SDK...more

iOS12 is here and IBM MobileFirst is pleased to announce that we have embraced the iOS12 upgrade gracefully like every year....more

If you have been following the mobile developers’ chatter on the internet, you are probably already aware that new apps submitted to the Google Play Store requires apps to target API level 26 (Android Oreo) or higher, since August 1, 2018. Existing apps on the Play Store will have to target their apps to API 26 (Android Oreo) or higher before publishing any updates starting November 1, 2018....more

Android Pie is here and IBM MobileFirst is ready for it....more

Deploying a mobile application is more than just building a mobile application and deploying it to the public app store. A mobile application talks to a back-end system. If the application can be used in many places around the world by a large community, it is likely that the backend servers will be located in several data centers to more efficiently serve the requests from the mobile application....more

MobileFirst JSONStore already allows you to write code to be able to pull and push data from/to an external data source, see here....more