It covers a wide range of functionalities that go further beyond the services offered by a web browser. The main features included in the latest version are:

• XForms processing engine.
  The XForms engine is the core component of DataMovil. This implementation allows for a great richness of features for the user and the developers. Some of these are:
  • Dynamic UI. The display informaton depends on actions realized by the user in the same screen
  • Conditionals and iterators. These features allow for complex logic at the client side
  • Calculated fields.
  • Typing and constraints of data introduced or handled by the client.
  • Separation between data model, processing and presentation. This greatly simplifies the mainteneace of the applications.
  • Plugins. They increase the functionality of the client. Example of plugins are bar scanner drivers, printing, RFID reader/writer drivers, digital signature and as many as they are needed for special purpose applications.



• Visual rendering engine



DataMovil includes its own presentation engine based on a CSS style language in XML syntax. The XForms controls are linked to presentation attributes through pointers in the same way as they are linked to the data model. The rendering engine allows to split the information in several pages and let the user navigate between pages wothout having to connect to the server. This aspect is crucial to the success of any user interface for small screen devices.



• Application management



A DataMovil application is a simple XML structure that can be stored in a file. The applications may be downloaded from a server and saved locally in the terminal or may be requested by another application and executed as they are received by the client. All these operations are managed by the DataMovil client. It has a local repository where the applications are held and where they are downloading connecting to the server. The version control of DataMovil assures that applications are always up-to-date. The downloading of applications may be automated in such a way that everytime DataMovil connects to a server, the new applications or versions of applications are retreived.



• Data management



The DataMovil client may use data stored in XML structures in a file. The access to the file can be made local to the device or remote to a server. Moreover, DataMovil incorporates capacities to save locally the state of an application or the data to be submitted to a server. A comprehensive number of facilities are provided to manage this data.



• Communications management



DataMóvil establishes the connection with the server on a need basis; only when a transmission of data has to be done. The data transmission may be done with strong 128 bits SSL encription. The data transmitted may be compressed in zip format or uncompressed depending upon the DataMovil client configuration. Additionally, the access to web services with SOAP protocol is natively supported.