PDA vs POCKET PC

[shawaw]

I have a project now in hand, and I have to decide if the development can be best achieved with PDA or PocketPC.

I am competent in eVB or eVC so programming in POCKETPC is not a problem. Only thing is - POCKETPC is more expensive, so the end products might not sell well !

PDA is cheap, but I am new to Palm Programming. Also, the project involve the following

- relational database design (which is no problem in POCKETPC CDB , but how about PDA's PDB)
- a desktop application to consolidate data from multiple PDA/PocketPC and churn out complex reports (again its easy with eVB and MS Access for Pocket PC, but how about conduits application for PDA)
- the desktop application may be web-based

Can any experience developer tell me which is the best solution - PDA or POCKETPC ??

:confused: :confused:

[Infinity]

You must mean Palm OS vs. WinCE.

I can't shed light on your request, though, sorry.

[schang]

You must mean Palm OS programming when you say "PDA"....

I tend to develop on Palm OS with Codewarrior, which basically requires knowledge of C or C++. The Palm OS SDK function calls are pretty quick to pick up.

Writing read/write access code for Palm Databases are fairly straightforward as the databases are flat record files. It all depends on what type of data and relationships you are trying to represent.

Conduit development is straightfoward too, and you can use Visual C++, COM, and Java for this with the Palm Conduit SDK. Syncing the data to an Access database, as well as other back end repositories would be easy however you connect to the backend given your chosen programming language (JDBC, ADO, ODBC, etc).

One could develop a "proxy" server as well for scaleability, to support synching from multiple devices and mapping the data to your back-end database. This model could fit in well with your web-based application.

I think the design issues are pretty much the same whether you choose to develop with ActiveSync or Palm's Hotsync. Just code is different.

Of course, there are many packaged solutions out there simplify all this for you. One in particular is AppForge which lets you code in VB to develop code that runs on PocketPC AND Palm OS. This may fit your needs...I tend to stay away though, as it limits the control of your code.

If you have any more questions, lemme know...

[schang]

oh sorry, i didn't really even answer your question...

in effect, i think the choice between platform support depends on the target user...

- who is using it?
- what devices will this user be or most likely be using?
- if they buy the devices, how much are they going to most likely spend on one?

Also for design considerations...
- Does the application require multithreaded operations? THen Palm OS is automatically ruled out, if the answer is yes (at least pre OS5)

I think you have to consider more of your user and project requirements before you decide based on development requirements.