Mobile Application Development I: Developing Smart Device Applications Using Visual Studio.NET

Abstract

n the previous chapter on mobile application development, we developed an order placement system (OPS) using Microsoft Embedded Visual Basic (EVB). Although EVB provides developers with the basic tools for developing mobile applications, it has many limitations. Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 addresses these limitations by including tools for developing smart device applications. Using these tools, developers can create mobile applications for PocketPCs or other Windows CE devices with relative ease and flexibility. Similar to EVB, Visual Studio .NET uses a form-based approach to build applications and provides developers with WYSIWYG tools for user interface development, but as you will find in this chapter, it not only provides many new tools to enrich the application but also simplifies many tasks that are cumbersome in EVB (i.e., creating menus and interacting with databases). Furthermore, Visual Studio .NET allows developers to use a number of different programming languages including Visual Basic and C# to develop applications so that developers can leverage their existing programming skill sets. To illustrate how Visual Studio .NET can be deployed to develop mobile applications, we will develop an upgraded version of the OPS in this chapter. In order to provide a better comparison between Visual Studio .NET and EVB, we will use Visual Basic as the programming language in this project.