Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework Architecture and Best Practices for Mobile Development

- The .NET Compact Framework (CF) brings the power of .NET to mobile devices, yet there is very little information on how to use it effectively - The number of developers using the .NET CF over the next few years is anticipated to increase greatly - Covers related important topics such as SQL Server 2000 Windows CE edition

Dan Fox is a technical director for Quilogy.

A Brave New World The last three years have been exciting times for architects and developers. Microsoft, in the spring of 2000, first announced a vision for computing termed Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS), which in February of 2002 materialized as Visual Studio .NET (VS .NET) and the Microsoft Windows .NET Framework. These products brought object-oriented programming to the world of Web development and helped mainstream the paradigm of connected applications using XML Web Services. However, it could be argued that the biggest boon for developers working with Microsoft development tools such as Visual Basic 6.0 (VB), Visual Interdev, Active Server Pages (ASP), and Visual C++ was that the introduction of the .NET Framework unified the programming model. Now, developers could use a common Integrated Development Environment (IDE), core languages, and tools and reap the benefits of rapid application development (RAD) programming inherent in VB, Web server applications with ASP, and powerful object-oriented development with Visual C++. This unification created opportunities for developers to extend their skills into new application areas by leveraging a core set of class libraries tied to a runtime engine and development environment. Fast-forward a little more than a year. Microsoft has now built on the foundation laid by v1.0 of the Windows .NET Framework by releasing v1.1 and Visual Studio .NET 2003. In this release not only has Microsoft consolidated features released after the initial release to manufacturing (RTM), including ADO.NET Data Providers for ODBC and Oracle, Visual J#, and ASP.NET Mobile Controls--formerly the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit (MMIT)--it has further expanded the reach of developers by including the Compact Framework and Smart Device Projects (SDP). These two together allow developers familiar with the desktop Framework to use the same core languages (VB and C#), runtime engine, and IDE to create applications targeted to smart devices, such as the Pocket PC 2002. But with this increased opportunity come additional challenges for architects and developers. The key is to understand not only the nuts and bolts of the technology, but how and in what scenarios to apply it when building solutions. This is the reason we wrote this book, and we hope the reason you've decided to read it. That is also why we strive in each section to provide the big picture in order to give you enough technical information to understand the challenges and techniques that can be used, while not getting bogged down in every last detail of implementation. For this reason, you'll notice that we rely heavily on short code snippets, listings, and pointers to other resources. A Note about Audience As mentioned in the previous section, we've written this book with architects, technical managers, and developers working in the corporate world in mind. Because these three roles often have a large diversity of skill sets, there may be parts of the discussion that are too detailed for some readers. If you find this to be the case, we urge you to rely on the executive summaries at the beginning of each chapter, which summarize key chapter points. We also recommend looking for the key point icons in the margins. These icons indicate special considerations or, as the name implies, key points that we don't want you to miss. For other readers the code snippets and listings may leave you wanting more. This is good and done by design; for this reason at the end of each chapter we've included a "Related Reading" section that discusses chapter topics in greater depth. Because some of the entries in the "Related Reading" sections necessarily refer to Web sites, keep in mind that links may change, and you may need to search for the article title, rather than using the address provided. For your convenience, we've plac