A Survey on Location Based Application Development for Android Platform

Android is currently the fastest growing mobile platform. One of the fastest growing areas in Android applications is Location Based Service (LBS). LBS provides information services based on the current or a known location and is supported by the Mobile positioning system. Presently, MOSDAC (Meteorological and Oceanographic Satellite Data Archival Centre) disseminates the weather forecast information through web. Android is one of the most widely used mobile OS these days and that is the reason why it is the best practice to develop application on Android platform. The application for disseminating location based weather forecast is a client-server application on Android platform. It provides weather forecast information as per user's location or location of interest. While developing a client- server application, the communication between client and database server becomes imperative. This paper discusses detailed analysis for choosing appropriate type of web service, data exchange protocols, data exchange format, and Mobile positioning technologies for client-server application. It also highlights issues like memory capacity, security, poor response time, and battery consumption in mobile devices. This paper is about exploring effective options to establish the dissemination service over smart phones with Android OS.