Table Of Content.NET Compact Framework 3.5
Data-Driven Applications
Build robust and feature-rich mobile data-driven
applications with the help of real-world examples
Edmund Tan
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
.NET Compact Framework 3.5 Data-Driven Applications
Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing
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First published: April 2010
Production Reference: 1220410
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-849690-10-2
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar ([email protected])
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: CRMLive.NET: An Overview 9
Tomorrow Inc. 10
The mobile sales force application 10
The mobile dashboard application 11
The mobile support case application 12
Data flow in CRMLive.NET 12
Deciding on the type of mobile application 13
Thin clients 13
Thick clients 14
Smart clients 14
Messaging 15
A brief summary 15
Defining the mobile sales force application 16
Capturing lead, opportunity, and customer information 17
Mobile screen design 18
Creating reusable controls 19
Maintaining global lists 19
Data retrieval and manipulation on the mobile device 20
Data transfer between multiple mobile devices 20
Task management 20
Full-text search functionality 21
Integrating with Windows Mobile and the hardware 22
Detect incoming phone calls and SMS 23
Integrating with the Windows Mobile Calendar and Contacts book 23
Data exchange using Bluetooth and IrDA 24
Capturing handwritten input 24
Data synchronization 25
Dual database support 25
Application maintenance and upgrades 25
Table of Contents
Defining the mobile dashboard application 25
Using stateless web services as a data source 26
Rendering the dashboard 27
Road show revenue 27
Total monthly sales 28
Sales for last three months 28
Defining the mobile support case application 28
Building a messaging backbone with MSMQ 29
Summary 30
Chapter 2: Building the Data Tier 31
Designing the data tier 31
SQL Server CE 3.5 versus Oracle Lite 10g 32
Connecting the Windows Mobile emulator to ActiveSync 33
Setting up SQL Server Compact 3.5 35
Installing SQL Server CE on the development machine 35
Installing SQL Server CE on the Pocket PC device. 36
Setting up Oracle Lite 10g 37
Installing Oracle Lite 10g on the development machine 37
Installing Oracle Lite 10g on the Pocket PC device 38
Building the data tier 38
Building the CRMLiveFramework project 39
Defining the IDataLibPlugin interface 40
Building the Plugin Manager UI 43
An overview 44
Implementing the PluginCollection class 46
Implementing the PluginManager class 46
Creating the SalesForceApp project 50
Building the ConfigurePlugin form 50
Building the PluginsSetup form 54
Testing what you've built so far 58
Building the database plugins 59
Implementing the SQL Server CE Plugin 60
Storing DDL in the resource file 60
Building the plugin class 63
Connecting to SQL Server CE 64
Programmatically creating the SQL Server CE database 65
Testing what you've done so far 67
Browsing the SQL Server CE database with Query Analyzer 68
Retrieving data from SQL Server CE 70
Data manipulation in SQL Server CE 71
Dealing with GUID values in SQL Server CE 74
Implementing the Oracle Lite plugin 75
Storing DDL in the resource file 75
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Building the plugin class 77
Connecting to Oracle Lite 77
Programmatically creating the Oracle Lite database 78
Browsing the Oracle Lite database with Msql 80
Retrieving data from Oracle Lite 81
Data manipulation in Oracle Lite 81
Dealing with GUID values in Oracle Lite 84
Summary 85
Chapter 3: Building the Mobile Sales Force Module 87
A brief walkthrough of what you will be building 88
Building a form navigation class 94
Building the main menu 96
Using Main() as the startup object 98
Creating the business objects to encapsulate your DataSets 100
Validating data in your business objects 108
Building the AccountViewer form 109
Data binding .NET controls to your business objects 111
Launching the AccountViewer form 111
Testing the AccountViewer form 114
Building the Tasks list 114
Populating the Tasks Datagrid control 115
Building the TaskDetailViewer form 116
Launching the TaskDetailViewer form 119
Testing the tasks list 120
Handling file attachments 120
Building a file manager class 121
Building the FileUpload user control 123
Building the FileDetailViewer form 126
Testing file upload functionality 128
Custom formatting and display in list controls 129
Building a collection sorter using the IComparer interface 130
Custom formatting and display in the list control 131
Using the History list control 135
Testing the History list control 136
Building the ProductList control 136
Using XML DOM to store and retrieve product selection 139
Using the ProductList control 141
Testing the ProductList control 142
Building a paged listing of accounts 142
Paging in SQL Server CE 143
Paging in Oracle Lite 146
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Building a paging user control 147
Creating a context menu for the paging user control 150
Launching the accounts listing page 151
Testing the accounts listing page 152
Summary 152
Chapter 4: Building Search Functionality 155
A brief walk-through of parameterized search 156
Building the parameterized search feature 157
Creating the parameterized search query in SQL Server CE 160
Creating the parameterized search query in Oracle Lite 163
Encapsulating the retrieved Dataset using business objects 164
Building the parameterized search forms 165
Building the search form 165
Building the search results listing form 168
Trying out your code 168
A brief walk-through of full-text search 169
Building the full-text search feature 171
Creating the Keyword Extractor classes 172
A sample keyword extractor—the HTML Keyword Extractor 173
Indexing the file 174
Creating the full-text search query for SQL Server CE 175
Creating the full-text search query for Oracle Lite 182
Encapsulating the retrieved dataset using business objects 185
Creating the full-text search forms 185
Trying out the full-text search 190
Improving the full-text search engine 190
Summary 191
Chapter 5: Building Integrated Services 193
Sending SMS and e-mail from your application 193
Sending SMS and e-mail directly through code 194
Delegating to the default Windows Mobile Compose UI 196
Intercepting incoming SMS 196
Intercepting an SMS message 197
Placing phone calls from your application 198
Detecting incoming phone calls 199
Populating the History tab in the sales force application 200
Creating the data tier functions to insert historical records 201
Encapsulating SMS functionality 204
Encapsulating phone functionality 206
Intercepting incoming SMS messages and phone calls
in the background 208
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Handling outgoing SMS messages and phone calls 212
Testing your code 215
Synchronizing with Windows Mobile Contacts 216
Synchronizing with Windows Mobile Tasks 219
Sharing an account between two devices 220
Sharing an account between two devices using Infrared (IrDA) 222
Sharing an account between two devices using Bluetooth 227
Capturing handwritten input using the Smart Device Framework 230
Summary 235
Chapter 6: Data Synchronization 237
Overview of the different data synchronization methods available
for Microsoft SQL Server CE 238
SQL Remote Data Access (SQLRDA) 238
Merge replication 238
Microsoft Synchronization Services 239
Overview of the different data synchronization methods available
for Oracle Lite 240
Oracle Mobile Server 240
A quick comparison between the various
Synchronization frameworks 241
Using Microsoft Synchronization Services 242
Setting up Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Synchronization Services 242
Creating the CRMLive server tables 243
Creating the WCF service 243
Configuring the WCF service library 246
Setting filters for the Sync 248
Configuring the client project 250
Writing the sync code 253
Conflict resolution 255
Using Oracle Mobile Server 256
Installing Oracle Database Enterprise 11g and Oracle Mobile Server 257
Creating an Oracle Mobile repository 258
Creating the CRMLive server tables 260
Creating a new publication using the Mobile Database Workbench 262
Creating a new mobile project 262
Adding publication items to your project 264
Adding sequence items to your project 268
Adding a publication to your project 270
Publishing the mobile application to the mobile server 273
Setting up application users using the WebToGo portal 275
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Registering the mobile device with the mobile server 279
Synchronizing with the mobile server 280
Synchronizing files with the server 281
Creating network-aware synchronization modules 283
Summary 284
Chapter 7: Optimizing for Performance 285
Measuring performance 286
Measuring .NET CF code performance 286
Capturing application performance statistics 289
Optimizing database performance 292
Data caching 293
Using database indexes to boost search performance 295
Other database optimization tips 297
Optimizing data transfer performance 297
Managing better code 300
Managing better strings 301
Managing better Winforms 302
Using BeginUpdate and EndUpdate 302
Using SuspendLayout and ResumeLayout 302
Load and cache forms in the background 303
Managing better XML 303
Using XMLTextReader and XMLTextWriter 303
XML serialization and deserialization thesis 304
Managing better files 304
The .NET Compact Framework garbage collector 304
Summary 306
Chapter 8: Securing the Application 307
Encrypting the database 307
Encrypting the SQL Server CE database 308
Encrypting the Oracle Lite database 309
Authenticating the sales force application 309
Performing one-way encryption using SHA256 310
Writing the code for authentication 312
Loading the login form 317
Encrypting data for inter-device transmission using AES 319
Summary 322
Chapter 9: Globalization 323
Supporting double-byte languages 323
Supporting Japanese character input in Windows Mobile 324
Supporting Unicode at the application level 324
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Designing culture-sensitive forms 326
Retrieving culture information 330
Summary 331
Chapter 10: Building the Dashboard 333
An overview of the dashboard 333
Creating the web service 334
Creating the dashboard smart client 338
Connecting to the web service 338
Creating the line chart 341
Creating the round gauge 350
Creating the bar chart 356
Summary 363
Chapter 11: Building the Support Case System 365
Introduction to MSMQ and the support case system 366
Setting up MSMQ on your mobile device 369
Writing your first MSMQ application 371
Setting up MSMQ on your server 377
Creating a queue on the server manually using the
computer management panel 378
Sending a message from the server to a remote mobile device 379
Sending data to a remote queue 379
Creating the server-side application 380
Creating the client-side application 385
Sending a message from the mobile device to the server 389
Writing the client-side code 389
Writing the server-side code 390
Summary 392
Chapter 12: Testing and Debugging 393
Overview of Power Toys for .NET CF 3.5 394
Installing Power Toys for .NET CF 3.5 394
Using the Remote Performance Monitor and GC Heap Viewer tool 395
Memory leaks and their causes 395
A sample application with memory leak 396
Using the Remote Performance Monitor tool to view application
statistics in real time 398
Using PerfMon to graphically view runtime performance statistics 400
Using the GC Heap Viewer tool to detect memory leaks 403
Resolving the memory leak 404
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Using the CLR Profiler tool 405
A sample application with bad performance 406
Launching the application with the CLR Profiler tool 409
Inspecting the Histogram view 410
Inspecting the Allocation Graph 411
Inspecting the Time Line view 412
Inspecting the Call Tree view 415
Using the App Configuration tool 417
Using the ServiceModel Metadata tool 419
Using the Remote Logging Configuration tool 421
Using the Network Log Viewer tool 423
Summary 424
Chapter 13: Packaging and Deployment 425
Deploying your solution as a CAB file 426
Adding the SalesForce application files to your CAB project 427
Configuring other miscellaneous settings 430
Deploying your solution as an MSI file 432
Creating an INI file 433
Creating the custom action DLL 433
Creating the MSI installer project 438
Creating an automated update service 442
Creating the server-side web service 442
Creating the client-side updater tool 445
Summary 454
Index 455
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