Mobile Devices & Webservices For Data Transfer Dotnet

[Colin Graham]

My skills are in VB. Net/SQL Server and i have touched on PDA
development mainly as a tester. i am aware of using webservices for
functionality.

I have been given a task to develop a solution which enables users of
handheld devices to go out to various sites and record information and
send the information back to a head office from site for processing.

Does anyone have any ideas or could give me any help regarding best
methods of connectivity and transferring of data. costs/speed etc....

My basic plan is to use a handheld device with some type of
connectivity (some people have mentioned GPRS but i dont have a
clue)technology to access web services on a server and then transfer
data using an XML dataset. Do i need sql server on the handheld device
???

does anyone have any helpful hints on how to connect to the
webservices, where the webservices should be located as i dont know
much about this aspect. Are thet located on a webserver hosted by a
3rd party or do i have my own server back at the main office.

any help greatly appreciated
Regards

CG

[csharpcomputing.com]

You may consider a few different ways to get data from different sites.
Whatever you choose,
1. Use Pocket internet explorer
This requires that web servers you visit format html to fit tiny screen.
This option requires coding on the servers and is reasonably fast to render.
2. Use Windows Forms running on the handheld and access web services running
on web servers. This option is a bit faster to render.
3. Use Windows Forms running on the handheld and connect directly to SQL
Server database.

Wireless networking is usually the bottleneck unless the PDA is on LAN. If
LAN is not an option, you will need to choose a wireless Internet provider
(e.g. T-Mobile, Verizon or ATT). Wireless internet will completely deplete
the battery power in under an hour. To get wireless internet, you will also
need to purchase a Special extension card that will act like an antenna.
These antennas are almost as big as the PDA itself. When reception is poor,
data transfer speed are much lower than for a dial-up modem.
Good luck,
Aleksey Nudelman
http://csharpcomputing.com