PocketPC and ODBC

[Aaron Smith]

I have a question... Will 3rd party ODBC drivers work on PocketPC? We
have drivers to connect to a proprietary database and I was wondering if
they would work on a handheld PDA running Windows CE or PocketPC 2003.
We have a project coming up that needs to grab info from these databases
and I need to know if it is one of our options..

Thanks,
Aaron

 

[Guest]

Aaron,

Do you mean install the PC based ODBC drivers on the Windows CE device?
If this is the case then I very much doubt it. For a start they will be for
a different processor and unless they have written something specifically for
Windows CE then I would think you are out of luck.

Chris.

 

[Aaron Smith]

Chris,

Yea that is what I meant. I since then found out that PPC doesn't
support databases like I had hoped. So we are going to move to a TCP/IP
communication solution to communicate with a server. One idea was to
just tell the device what form controls and text to display on the
screen from the server. My idea is to write all the screens we need
entry for and then just request and send data to/from the server.

Anyone have any experiance with either approach and if you did, did it
work well?

Aaron

 

[Guest]

The way we did it is to have an application on the PPC that retrieves & sends
it's data to the server via a web service. Works quite well for our
application.

 

[Aaron Smith]

I never even thought of a web service... The problem though is that I
don't think that is going to be an option for us. The data that we are
accessing is in DataFlex.. I think the main goal that they wanted was to
be able to use Visual DataFlex to retrieve the data and ship it out to
the handheld through TCP/IP...

 

[Guest]

How are the PPC's going to connect to the server? GPRS, GSM, ActiveSync?

Does DataFlex have an ODBC? The web service could always use this to get the
data. I think a web service would be the quickest solution, to use some other
method would probably mean reinventing the wheel somewhere along the line.

 

[Aaron Smith]

Unfortunately, in order to get ODBC for DataFlex, we have to purchase
it, which adds even more cost to this project. I will run it by the
bosses and see what they think about that.

The devices will connect through a wireless network in a building. We
bought a test device that has 802.11b capabilities. That is one of the
reasons I didn't like the idea of controlling what is on the screen of
the device from a server application. If it drops connection or can't
communicate, the device is dead in the water and you can't do anything.
If we just request and send information, we can at least continue on in
most instances.

 

[Guest]

That's the reason we went for a smart client rather than browser based. The
users of our software are out and about doing repairs and there's a good
chance they won't be able to get a mobile phone signal.

I haven't tried a wireless network connection but a web service should still
work fine.

I'd try and push the web service route, there would certainly be less code
to write to get the data to/from the device and you could then concentrate on
the core system code.

 

[Lucas Tam]

Anyone have any experiance with either approach and if you did, did it
work well?

A webservice would work really well - have the webservice return data which
the PPC will parse and display.

 

[Lucas Tam]

Unfortunately, in order to get ODBC for DataFlex, we have to purchase
it, which adds even more cost to this project. I will run it by the
bosses and see what they think about that.

I think you mentioned screen scaping early right? You could write your own
screen scraper - but it'll probably cost more than just buying the ODBC
driver.

The devices will connect through a wireless network in a building. We
bought a test device that has 802.11b capabilities. That is one of the
reasons I didn't like the idea of controlling what is on the screen of
the device from a server application. If it drops connection or can't
communicate, the device is dead in the water and you can't do
anything. If we just request and send information, we can at least
continue on in most instances.

Not to mention, it'll use a lot of bandwidth if you're planning on doing a
Terminal session - also it'll chew up the processors of the handhelds.

You're better off building the app specifically for the PPCs.