mNOW! Communications Server

The mNOW! Communications Server acts as the communications hub for the mNOW! Mobile Framework^®.  Based upon Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation - Microsoft’s implementation of the industry standard Web Services 2.0 specification - it provides secure, reliable communications between the different modules of the framework and is designed to accommodate all deployment scenarios from small local deployments to large mission critical deployments that require enterprise scalability, high availability and redundancy. 

The mNOW! Communications Server also acts as the gateway to the framework’s three (3) repositories:

Transaction Queue
The Transaction Queue provides an interim repository for outbound and inbound transactions.  This approach enables higher performance through the pre-processing of dispatch data to ensure immediate transfer to occasionally connected devices and more consistent and reliable processing of submitted data, especially data transmitted over high latency networks or in peaks and valleys common to batch, shift or time zone based usage patterns.

Metadata Repository
The Metadata Repository persists all of the system information collected and managed by the mNOW! Mobile Framework.  This includes information about the device community, configuration settings for a variety of modules and services, communications and integration activities, and all system errors.  A configurable set of archival processes ensure that stale or obsolete data is continually removed to enable tuning for optimal performance and operation.

Replication Repository
The Replication Repository persists the lookup and/or validation data often required for rich, robust mobile applications.  Data for inventory, asset, price and/or categorization can be continually maintained along with the appropriate change set information to ensure that only changed data is transferred to the device, significantly improving performance and reducing data transmission costs.