5. The MIDlet Habitat

YOU know a little bit about MIDlets already. In this chapter, you’ll learn the details of how MIDlets live and die and how devices prevent bad MIDlets from performing evil deeds.

5.1. The MIDlet Life Cycle

The entire life of a MIDlet is controlled by application management software (AMS), a nebulous term that refers to whatever it is on the device that takes care of MIDlets.

When the user asks to run a MIDlet, it is the AMS that creates an instance of the MIDlet and calls its startApp() method. When it’s time for the application to exit, the AMS takes care of cleaning up. The AMS handles installing and removing MIDlet suites as well as advanced functions like the push registry and content handling, both of which are described ...

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