Until now, the idea of running something akin to a Java EE application server on a small handeld device would have been greeted with ridicule.  Suddenly that notion doesn't seem so ridiculous when considering the recent technology that's been made available. In particular, the following software advances make this pipe dream more of a reality:

• Java Standard Edition for Embedded Devices: A series of Java virtual machines are available from Sun for many of the popular embedded hardware/OS platforms. They are not only Java SE compatible, but have been space optimized from a static footprint and RAM perspective to perform in embedded environments.  To give you an idea of some of those optimizations, read this.
  
• Java Enterprise Edition 6 Platform Specification and the Web Profile:  The Java EE 6 specification allows for the creation of a subset of the component technologies, called "profiles".  The first of these has been dubbed the Web Profile and contains the common technologies required to create small to medium web applications.  Rather than having to use a full blown Java EE application server in all its glory, you can take advantage of a significantly smaller, less complex framework.
  
• Embedded GlassFish: This capability, which is now part of GlassFish v3, enables you to run GlassFish inside your Java application, as opposed to the other way around. Simply put, there is no need install GlassFish or create GlassFish domains in this scenario.  Instead, you include an instance of glassfish-embedded-web.jar in your classpath, make a few GlassFish Embedded API calls from your standard Java application, and voila! you've got a web application up and running.
  

The Hardware

Rather than opting for one of the many embedded development platforms around (because I'm cheap), I instead decided to investigate what was available from a handheld perspective and see if that environment could be adapted to suit my needs.  After some searching, it looked like the Nokia N810 just might fit the bill.  Courtesy of my buddy Eric Bruno, here's a picture of the N810:

To get a feel for this very capable device, check out Eric's Article. What most interested me was that (1) it has 128MB RAM, (2)  a 400MHz Arm v6 processor, (3) runs a common embedded version of Linux (maemo), (4) has a version of Java SE Embedded (from Sun) which runs fine on this platform and (5) can be had for a relatively affordable price on eBay.

The Operating System

The Nokia N810 is powered by the maemo distribution, an open source platform with a thriving community of developers.  Knowing full well that any attempt to get a web application up and running on this device would stretch its resources to the limit, it was necessary to reclaim as much RAM as possible before starting out.  Here's a description of some of the kludgery involved:

1. You'll need to download and install some additional applications which can be retrieved from the N810's Application Manager program.  They include: rootsh to enable root access to the device and openssh-client and openssh-server to remotely access the device.
   
2. A quick and dirty way to reclaim RAM is to shut down the X-server and kill all of the windowing applications that run in parallel. There are certainly more elegant ways to do this, but in addition to being cheap, I'm lazy too.  What you quickly find out is that any attempt to manually kill off some of these processes results in a reboot of the tablet.  Why? Because by default, the N810 includes a watchdog process that monitors the state of the system.  If it detects any irregularities, it forces a restart.
3. You can get around this problem by putting the device into what is called "R&D" mode.  This is achieved by downloading the "flasher" utility from maemo.org and establishing a USB connection between the N810 and your host computer.  Directions for this process can be found here.
4. Once established, you can invoke the following flasher command:  flasher3.5 --set-rd-flags=no-lifeguard-reset. If this was done successfully, you'll notice that a wrench appears on the tablet screen when it is rebooted.
   
5. Once in R&D mode you'll have to remotely ssh into the device via the WiFi connection. The following script called set-headless.sh has been provided to kill off the windowing system.  After executing this script, the N810 in effect becomes a headless device.  The only way to communicate with it is through the network.

The Environment

Here's what was required to get the web application up and running:

1. Ssh into the device.
   
2. Download an evaluation copy of Java SE Embedded (ARMv6 Linux - Headless).  For this example the download file was gunzip'ed and untar'ed into the N810 device's /usr directory resulting in a new /usr/ejre1.6.0_10 directory.
3. Download a copy of glassfish-embedded-web-3.0.jar and place this file in the /usr/ejre1.6.0_10/lib directory.
4. Modify your PATH variable to include /usr/ejre1.6.0_10/bin and set your JAVA_HOME variable to /usr/ejre1.6.0_10
5. Create a temporary directory, for this example we'll create a /root/tmp directory.
6. Compile the following Java source file, Embedded.java,  on a JDK equipped system, which is a slightly hacked version of the original provided by Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine.
7. Create a glassfish directory under /root/tmp/ and place the compiled Embedded.class file there
8. Download the sample hello web application, hello.war, and place it in the /root/tmp directory.
   
9. Reclaim as much RAM as possible by running the set-headless.sh script
   
10. Run the web application from inside the /root/tmp directory via the the following command-line invocation:
    

     # java -cp /usr/ejre1.6.0_10/lib/glassfish-embedded-web-3.0.jar:. glassfish/Embedded hello.war 600

As the N810 cannot match even the most modest of laptops in terms of performance, be prepared to wait around a little before the application is ready.  Check this output to see what is printed out to the console during invocation.

For this run the, N810 was assigned a WiFi IP address of 192.168.1.102, thus the browser is pointed to that address with port 8888.  Here's what comes up:

And Interacting with the web app produces this:

So this is obviously not ready for prime time, but it does open up a whole lot more possibilities in the near future.

Happy New Year!