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Asked: 2026-05-10T22:57:11+00:00

Okay, I will shortly be starting down the path of windows mobile development. I

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Okay, I will shortly be starting down the path of windows mobile development. I know nothing about the subject really and I am looking for people with experience to let me know of any gottchas you may know of.

Right now I dont even have a breif of what is requied but the assumption is that the application will be very little more than a bunch of CRUD forms for updating data. The only other requirment knowladge I have is that the application will need to support offline storage when there is no signal avaliable. This in turn will obviously require some kind of syncronization when signal returns.

My initial thoughts are that the application will primarily be a front end to interact with a web service layer. Im assuming that WCF will be an appropriate technology for building these services? I also thought that SQL Server CE would be a good route to go down with regards to the offline storage issues.

Any knowlage that you feel is useful within this domain would be appreciated. Advice, links, books anything appreciated.

EDIT: It has been noted that there are two ways to go with off-line synchronization. To either use some form of message queuing or to use SQL synchronization tools. Could anyone offer a good comparison and introduction to these?

EDIT 2: After a little more digging I get the impression that there are basically 3 different approaches I can use here:

  1. Emmbeded Database to query against then syncronization online, when able
  2. MSMQ along with .NET remoting
  3. WCF with ExchangeWebServiceMailTransport bindings using Exchange Server.

Now, there has been a nice few points raised on the first issue, and I think I understand at some level the issues I would face. But I’d like to get a little more information regarding MSMQ implementations and using WCFs new bindings.

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  1. Here a few words from my experience so far (about 9 months) of .net Windows Mobile development.

    1. Well you are occasionally connected. (Or more likely occasionally disconnected). You have to choose whether you are going to use messaging with queues (i.e. WCF/SOAP/XML or something like it) or database synchronisation. I choose the SQL synchronisation route so I can’t really comment on messaging. The SQL synchronisation route is not hassle free!

    2. If you go down the sync route with SQL compact like me you basically have two choices. SQL Server merge replication or the newer ADO.NET Synchronisation services. If you choose the former you need to be really careful with your DB design to ensure it can be easily partitioned between mobile subscribers and the publisher. You really need to think about conflicts, and splitting tables that wouldn’t normally be split in a normalised DB design is one way of doing that. You have to consider situations where a device goes offline for some time and the publisher DB (i.e. main DB) and/or a subscriber alters the same data. What happens when the device comes back online? It might mean resolving conflicts even if you have partitioned things well. This is where I got burnt. But SQL Merge Replication can work well and reduces the amount of code you have to write.

    3. Roll your own DAL. Don’t attempt to use datareaders etc. directly from UI code and don’t use typed datasets either. There may be third party DALs that work with Windows Mobile (i.e. I know LLBLGEN does, might be worth a look) but Linq-to-SQL is not supported and anyway you need something lightweight. The chances are the DAL won’t be too big so roll it yourself.

    4. If you are using .net you’ll probably end up wanting some unimplemented platform features. I recommend using this inexpensive framework to give you what your missing (especially as related to connectivity and power management) – http://www.opennetcf.com/Products/SmartDeviceFramework/tabid/65/Default.aspx

    5. Windows Mobile devices partially switch off to save power when not in use. If you are doing a polling type design you’ll need to wake them up every x mins. A normal .net timer class won’t do this. You’ll need to use a platform feature which can be used from OpenNetCF (above). The timer class is called LargeIntervalTimer and is in the OpenNetCF.WindowsCE assembly/namespace (I think).

    Good Luck!

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