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 Developing Apps for the Palm, Pocket PC or Both
I have recently been giving more thought to developing software for the Palm or Pocket PC - or both, but let me start by some general thoughts on the subject.  There may be many developers who have found their calling in writing some sort of software for the "small screen".  Most often these are less applications that server a particular purpose and there are probably thousands of applets available.  I don't know but there may be quite a few developers making a whole lot of money writing games, utilities or specialized applications for handheld devices.  This is not my interest, and so I would not be reviewing developer tools which are primarily aimed at this market.

My own development efforts have always been database oriented.  For the most part written for the Windows desktop using my tool of choice:  Clarion from Softvelocity and browser based applications which most often will access the same database as the deskop application.  My choice for developing web enabled database applications is CodeChargeStudio from YesSoftware.  For the vast majority of my customers/end users this combination has worked fine, however, now and again I hear from someone who wants a Palm or Pocket PC applet that would communicate with the same database and could be synchronized.  Now what?  I have so far resisted the temptation to develop software for the Palm and have chosen Visual CE from Syware for developing Pocket PC applets, to supplement other applications.  Visual CE makes it easy to develop a portable version of a desktop application with a couple of restrictions.  First, any table that is going to be be "synced" must have a numeric column as the first field in your database table and it must be named OID and Visual CE does not allow for Palm application development.  Is there a better option available?  My current thinking is "yes", and is is Pendragon Forms.  PF allows for development of software for both the Palm and Pocket PC and development is quick and easy.  No special OID field is required for syncing and I like the way autonumbering fields are handled better than the Visual CE method. 

I may be writing more on this topic soon, so check back often.
 Tools for PDA Database Apps
So far, I have only reviewed one tool for developing database applications for the PDA, Syware's Visual CE.  This program allows you to easily develop database "applets" for the Pocket PC.  It has been my category pick because I have limited myself to considering tools for developing PPC applications.  What if you want to develop database applications that run on the Palm?  This may eliminate Visual CE from your consideration, but are the applications that will let you develop for both the Pocket PC and Palm devices? The answer is yes, I am so far looking at two such programs:  Satelite Forms and Pendragonforms.
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This page will contains links to reviews as they are added to the site.  These reviews should also be reachable by other buttons on the site.  I hope this will help you find reviews of interest to you.

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