Application Form (DEADLINE: October 25, 2000)

Workshop Objective

Hong Kong government is actively promoting Information Technology and Electronic Commerce. As smart cellular phones become more and more ubiquitous, wireless e-commerce is for sure a future trend. Potential applications, to name but a few, include wireless seats (restaurants, theatres, etc.) reservation, wireless small cash transactions, and wireless advertisements pushing. The WAP (wireless application protocol) is a de facto standard currently pushed by several giant cell-phone manufacturers (e.g., Nokia). The markup language in WAP, the WML (wireless markup language), is a derivative of the well-known versatile XML, which is widely considered to be one of the major building blocks in future information and management systems in e- business. Together with the Push Architecture in WAP, the last tetherless hop of internetworking is going to affect our daily lives tremendously. This workshop aims to provide the necessary information and skills for corporate users to understand the WAP technology and its application towards wireless e-commerce development.

Workshop Structure

This is a two-day workshop covering major topics in WAP. The workshop is divided into two parts: lecture sessions and hands-on laboratory sessions. Day one of the workshop is at introductory level suitable for managers, Information Technology (IT) staffs, end users, and web developers. After the first day, workshop attendants should be aware of latest technologies in WML, WMLScript and should understand the basics of the WAP. They will have an opportunity to develop their own webpages (WML cards and decks) using such technologies. After the second day, workshop attendees will learn how to apply the Push Architecture facilities in developing electronic commerce applications such as wireless personalized directory services and wireless Search Engine.

Unique Features

• Cover the basic XML and WML for beginner
• Introduce and implement Electronic Commerce standards using WML
• Wireless and fixed-wire protocols: PAP, POTAP, HTTP
• Push Architecture
• Emphasize extensive hands-on experience with the Internet and the Nokia WAP Toolkit in a closely supervised and well equipped computer laboratory (each workshop participant will be assigned a high-speed workstation)

Who should Attend?

IT professionals who are responsible for the design and development of their future generation Internet-based information services, software and systems. The workshop is designed for technical professionals who have programming experience in HyperText Markup Language, object-oriented programming language, web developing suites, and are familiar with Windows NT (IIS)/Linux (Apache) environment. Electronic Commerce development using WML will be conducted in hands-on lab sessions.

About the Speakers

Dr. Ricky Y.-K. Kwok is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong, where he received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering in 1991. After having worked as an electronic engineer in the industry for one year, he started his postgraduate studies in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1992. He obtained the M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Computer Science, in 1994 and 1997, respectively, under the supervision of Professor Ishfaq Ahmad. Ricky's Ph.D. dissertation, followed on his master thesis research, was on the design and analysis of efficient parallel algorithms for compile-time multiprocessor scheduling. In addition to parallel processing research, he has been working on research problems related to distributed multimedia systems, mobile computing, and wireless networking. In these areas, he has published over 45 technical papers in various leading journals, research books, and refereed international conference proceedings. Before joining the University of Hong Kong in 1998, Ricky was a Visiting Scholar for one year in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, where he worked with Professors Howard Jay Siegel and Arif Ghafoor on a research project in the field of distributed heterogeneous computing. Ricky is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM. Currently, he serves as the Vice Chairman for the ACM Hong Kong Chapter.

Dr. James S. H. Kwok is currently assistant professor of Department of Information and Systems Management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He holds a BEng (Hons) in Electronic and Communications Engineering (1992) from the University of North London, a Ph.D. in Digital Image Processing (1997) from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London. He was a visiting scholar at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (1994-1995). He has published in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Graphical Models and Image Processing, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing as well as in numerous refereed conference proceedings such as ICIP, HICSS, PACIS and IEEE SICSPCS. His research interests include intellectual property protection for electronic commerce, digital watermarking, image database systems, and multimedia database systems. His teaching interests include XML, Java, and Electronic commerce.

Workshop Details

Time: Day 1 Morning 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Topic: Introduction to XML and WML
Speakers: Dr. James Kwok

Subjects Covered:

• SGML, XML, and WML
  • Background and History
• XML Grammar Specification
  • Well-Formed XML Documents
  • Names, Characters, and White Spaces
  • XML Markup: Comments, entity references, character references, processing instructions, CDATA, start and end tags, empty elements
• Document Type Definition (DTD)
  • Internal and External DTD
  • Attribute
  • Entities
  • Examples

(Hands-on session - 1.5 hour)

• Developing Web applications using markup that is readable by both humans and machines: XML and JavaScript (using ASP on IIS/NT).

Time: Day 1 Afternoon 2:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Topic: Introduction to WAP, Viewing WML on a cell-phone
Speaker: Dr. Ricky Kwok

Subjects Covered:

• WAP Primer: WAE, WSP
• WML and WMLScript development (card and deck)
• WML Browser

(Hands-on part - 1.5 hour)

• Developing and viewing "WAP" pages on the Nokia 7110 Simulator.

Time: Day 2 Morning 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Topic: WAP Push Architecture
Speakers: Dr. James Kwok and Dr. Ricky Kwok

Subjects Covered:

• Why push? Push-based application semantics.
• WAP Push Architecture: Push Proxy Gateway, Push Access Protocol, Push Over-the-Air Protocol
• Illustrative example: personalized advertisements pushing

(Hands-on part - 1.5 hour)

• Developing a wireless localized advertiser using WML and a simulated Push Proxy Gateway (Phone.com).

Time: Day 2 Afternoon 2:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Topic: Security and Performance Issues, Transcoding
Speakers: Dr. Ricky Kwok

Subjects Covered:

• WAP with SSL (WTLS)
• Caching and prefetching technologies (user agent profile)
• transcoding technologies: converting legacy full-scale Web materials to WML decks for cell-phones

(Hands-on part - 1.5 hour)

• Developing a mini-search engine with intelligent caching/prefetching