.NET Book Review: Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework: Architecture and Best Practices for Mobile Development
Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework: Architecture and Best Practices for Mobile Development
Authors: Dan Fox, Jon Box
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
ISBN: 0-321-19788-7
Retail Price: $49.99 US, $75.99 CDN
Publication Date: October 2003
Paperback: 367 pages
Online information: Authors biographies, Index, Chapter 5
Author online information: Source code
URL: http://atomic.quilogy.com/cfbook
Mobile devices like Pocket PCs are more and more popular and enterprises are starting to see them not just as fancy toys for geeks but as useful business tools. If you are asked to develop a mobile application running on Pocket PCs or if you want to learn this new platform, where do you start from? Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework: Architecture and Best Practices for Mobile Development (what a title!) is a book targeted at architects, developers and IT managers to help them understand this platform. This is a very large audience and usually, it result in a disastrous book but the authors amazingly pulled it off; architects, developers and IT managers will find this book useful.
Fox and Box are covering everything you need to know to get a good understanding of the NET Compact Framework and mobile devices. Subjects covered are: how to access local and remote data, how to use SQL Server CE (yes SQL Server is running on Pocket PCs!) and very importantly, how to synchronize data from and the devices. Localization, security and deployment are also covered.
Although you’ll find plenty of code examples, the focus here is to learn the platform and how to architect applications. Before you open Visual Studio.NET, before you create you first .NET Compact Framework application and even before you write a single line of code, you should read this book. It will help you understand the platform and save you from costly architectural mistakes.
High praises for Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework: Architecture and Best Practices for Mobile Development.