Wireless XML applications belong to areas where high value opportunities meet serious technological challenges. The presentation discusses and demonstrates technologies that aim to overcome some of the difficulties and to enable attractive applications. In a world where people increasingly depend on interaction with various information services the wireless PDA offers an unparalleled mobility but it's full utilization of content-rich structured data is limited by several factors. The biggest challenge stems from small bandwidth limiting the amount of data the device is able to receive while its user waits. The lesser problem is that although a true technological marvel, the mobile computer of today has limited processing power further slowing down interactive use. We are thus motivated to advance technologies that by working in synergy optimize the path between services and the interaction with structured information on a wireless PDA client.

It is of utmost importance that accepted and popular standards be used to express both data content and processing logic. Thus we concentrate on XML and XSLT, respectively, and proceed to greatly optimize the implementation of both. Our efforts are informed by usability studies which point to the critical role small latencies play in the user acceptance of interactive applications. We thus strive to make content transmission as effective as possible and the subsequent processing on the wireless client very fast.

Our solution begins by saving bandwidth via transmitting a special compact representation of XML data. The representation is at the same time directly processable by compiled and optimized XSLT stylesheets. The compiled stylesheets (translets) can themselves be downloaded via the wireless connection. On the mobile client they serve as a bridge between data and applications. Thus even though the universally adopted standards of XML and XSLT are used to implement services on the server side, and both tools are fully utilized on the wireless client no XML parser or an XSLT processor needs to run on the underpowered handheld. Since content involved follows the XML data model it can be put to multiple purposes on the client, including visualizing it in a variety of ways, or using it as a lookup table.

In a motivating scenario we download a list of items in a single request-response cycle and proceed to generate variously sorted views of the data with minimal latency while avoiding several time consuming server round-trips altogether.

The solution is completely standards based and retains the whole generality of XML/XSLT based IT.

We believe the synergy of benefits enabled by our technology creates a make-it-or-break-it criterion for the success of a number of attractive wireless services for the mobile user beyond mere email and/or slow WWW browsing -- towards the future visualized for m-Business, location-based services, sales force automation, and other mobile business solutions.

A live demo of the discussed concepts and their applications is planned as an integral part of the presentation.

The technologies involved will be presented here for the first time.