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Mobile and Embedded Application Development

When embarking on a mobile or embedded project, there are many options from which to choose. From a developer's perspective, there are two core operating systems for mobile development: Windows CE .NET and Windows XP. Windows CE .NET includes Windows Mobile software for Pocket PC and Windows Mobile software for Smartphone as well as custom hardware running Windows CE .NET. There are also a vast array of vendors who provide custom devices running Windows CE .NET. The Windows XP platform includes the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Visual Studio .NET 2003 provides you with a single development tool that can target both of these platforms. The latest version of Visual Studio .NET includes the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework which is a subset of the full Microsoft .NET Framework. The .NET Compact Framework is designed specifically for resource-constrained devices such as PDAs and smartphones. Developers familiar with creating apps using Visual Studio .NET will have an easy transition when they begin programming for devices.

The .NET Compact Framework features support for Windows Forms classes, including a complete set of controls, enabling rapid development of rich user interfaces with a structure consistent with the underlying platform. The ADO.NET and XML data classes provide complete support for data handling. The ability to access Web services is integral to the .NET Compact Framework. As with the full .NET Framework, invoking a Web service is as simple as making a function call. The compact version of the full common language runtime (CLR) is optimized for devices and provides many of the same services such as just-in-time (JIT) compilation, memory management, and error handling. The CLR supports the same Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) and multilanguage capability.

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Windows CE Edition (also known as SQL Server CE) is designed to integrate with the .NET Compact Framework by means of Visual Studio .NET, simplifying database application development for smart devices. Using the new SQL Server CE data provider to managed code via the CLR, you can build highly extensible mobile applications with offline data management capability for disconnected scenarios.

SQL Server CE enables straightforward, efficient access to enterprise data whether a device is always connected or intermittently connected to the computer running SQL Server. When used in conjunction with SQL Server, SQL Server CE provides extended capabilities for synchronization through merge replication.

Visual Studio .NET 2003 ships with a Windows CE .NET emulator, so that even if you do not own a device you can use the emulation technology to create and test your smart device projects. Visual Studio .NET provides powerful debugging capabilities for smart device projects, consistent with the desktop-based Visual Studio .NET debugger. The debugger works with both physical devices and the emulator.

The Windows Mobile (for Pocket PC and Smartphone) and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SDKs integrate with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and provide access to platform-specific features. The Tablet PC SDK enables you to access the handwriting and speech extensions to the Windows XP platform. The Windows Mobile SDKs include emulator images for the latest platform releases, allowing you to test their solutions on these new platforms, even before having access to physical devices.

If you want to create mobile Web applications, you can take advantage of ASP.NET Mobile controls. This server-side technology enables ASP.NET to render markup to a wide variety of mobile devices from a single code base. These devices include Wireless Markup Language (WML) and cHTML cell phones, HTML pagers, and PDAs.

To help demystify the solutions available, MSDN Online has created the MSDN Mobile and Embedded Developer Center. The site covers application development for platforms ranging from Windows Mobile software for Smartphone to Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Mobile-related server technologies and services are also offered on this site.

Developers wishing to learn more about mobile application development should check out Microsoft Mobile DevCon 2004, taking place in San Francisco in late March. See https://www.microsoftmdc.com for the latest details on the conference.