Can someone recommend some Palm Software Devlopment tools?

[tmcrae]

I need to be able to create software which will run on the Palm OS platform (probably version 4.1). The application, whose basic function is to accept user inputted data and to perform calculations on it, will be used out in the field. Once data has been collected, it needs to be uploaded/synced to our AS/400 computer, either directly to one or more DB2/400 relational tables or indirectly to these tables via Lotus Notes.

I would prefer something easy to use. I have never programmed in Visual Basic or C++, so something which is easy to learn is important as well. Cost, of course, will be of primary concern. Having said that, however, I would still like to know how many different solutions out there that are available.

Can anyone make any recommendations?

 

[JustKIDn]

It's entirely possible that you may not need to program anything at all.

All you want is a database and a way to sync the data once received.

I think what you want is Pilot-DB or DB (for short)

http://pilot-db.sourceforge.net

The price is right (FREE) And there doesn't seem to be any real limitations on it.

Try it and let us know what you think!

tgus

____________________________
Families can be together forever...

 

[tmcrae]

Thanks, I'll check it out! I forgot to mention that for this particular application, I'll need the ability to draw and store a diagram. Currently, the application in question has been programmed in PowerBuilder and the diagram functionality has been handled using MS Paint. Any ideas?

 

[bbolte]

i know you said you don't do visual basic, but there is an add-on of sorts called AppForge that will turn VB projects into Palm apps. there is a section on the palm website all about palm os development, lots of links to various ways to program for the palm os.

 

[birmbear]

If you're going to anything but the most basic of stuff, you're going to have to write code. The &quot;industry standard&quot; <drumm roll, please> seems to be CodeWarrior. It's heavy duty, with a steep learning curve. I've used it and it works.

AppForge -- which others have mentioned -- works okay. But I've found it a bit limited.

CASL is a competitor to AppForge. FWIW, I've found it to be more useful / less limited than the latter. It's developer community seems pretty vociferous and loyal. I like it for smaller, quickie jobs.

JAVA...now you're talking. This is pretty sexy stuff, IMHO. There are a lot of JAVA tools available. Simplicity for JAVA is a really good package that I've used. Also, you can do MIDP development using good IDE's from Sun (Forte), Inprise (JBuilder), and IBM (Visual Age).

Bottom line: you first figure out what you want your app to do. Then you find the simplest-to-use -- or most powerful -- tool that will allow you to accomplish it all.

Hope this helps,
__Birmbear

Ricardo Birmele

 

[bbolte]

birmbear,
how much java have you done on the palm? most things i've read about it really complain about loading the jrt(?) on the palm.

 

[Karl Blessing]

I'm a bit skeptic when it comes to using Java on a handheld. My best bet would to obtain any kind of tool that either uses an Assembler or C language. Despite these are harder to learn, its benefits seem to outweight the trouble and performance hits of using an interputational language such as Java requiring a virtual machine loaded on the host device. Thus you are not only running the java code, but require additional processor to run the virtual shell for the java bytecode.

If you are interested in the C/C++ approach you can always try to obtain Codewarrior for Palm.

On a pocketPC device, development sugestions are going to vary of course due to the higher processing capabilities and storage capacity (however doesnt mean its going to be any easier to develop on, just means the results might be more promising far as performance and reliability goes ) Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[birmbear]

bbolte,
Truth be told, I haven't done an awful lot of JAVA on the Palm. Mostly that's due to 1) I haven't found that much demand for it; and 2) many of the same reasons sited by Karl in this thread. I tend to mostly go with C on the PALM.
If you want to try it and get your feet wet, I'd suggest that you get a trial version of Simplicity for Palm OS Devices. It uses IBM's J9 vm, and will get you going faster than any other JAVA stuff I've seen.
Hope this helps,
__Birmbear

Ricardo Birmele