Palm Database Programming The Electronic Version
Chapter 1: Introduction
This material was published in 1999. See the free
Palm OS Programming
online course I developed for
CodeWarriorU for some updated material.
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Chapter Summaries
The chapters in this book are meant to be read in sequence, since
the later chapters will be hard to understand without the information
presented in the earlier chapters.
Part One: Platform Basics
The first part introduces you to the Palm Computing platform.
You'll learn about the hardware and the software in your Palm device
and how to build applications for it.
Chapter 2, "What You Need to Know About Palm Devices", provides basic
information on how the device works. This includes the hardware, the
operating system, and the memory. Even if you're not very interested
in the hardware, it's important to know something about the device
because it affects what your programs can and cannot do. This chapter
also shows you how to reset your device, which is a skill you should
master before you start programming!
Chapter 3, "Development Tools and SDKs", introduces you to the set of
development tools you'll need to master to do any programming. The
Palm OS Software Development Kit, the CodeWarrior compiler, and the
GCC compiler are covered, as well as the Palm OS Emulator, a key part
of your programming arsenal. The chapter shows you how to use the
tools to write new applications and how to debug those applications.
It also presents the C and C++ programming issues that are specific to
the platform.
Chapter 4, "Writing Palm Applications", explores how applications
work and how to write them. Program launches, event processing, and
user interface programming are all explained in depth. This includes
the contexts in which your application gets started, how to perform
long operations while keeping the device responsive, and how to build
and use forms and dialogs to create a user interface. A skeletal
application is developed, and on the CD-ROM you'll find an application
called UI Test that demonstrates the various user interface options
that are available. The user interface for the Phone Book sample is
also developed in this chapter.
Part Two: Databases
The second part introduces you to Palm and relational databases.
You'll learn the basics of what a database is, how to get data in and
out, and how to interface to a database from C/C++.
Chapter 5, "Palm Databases", introduces the built-in database
interfaces that are available on the Palm Computing platform. Palm
database support is added to the Phone Book sample.
Chapter 6, "Relational Databases", introduces relational databases
and the SQL query language. Tables and database design are covered,
and you're shown how to get the data you want out of the database and
how to update it. An evaluation version of Sybase's Adaptive Server
Anywhere is included on the CD-ROM (installation instructions are in
Appendix B) and is used to demonstrate the concepts.
Part Three: Database Applications
The third part shows you how to build database-centric
applications. You'll learn how to combine what you learned in the
first two parts with some exciting database technology to build Palm
applications that know how to talk to external databases.
Chapter 7, "Data Synchronization", discusses what data
synchronization is, why it's challenging, and strategies for
synchronizing with external databases. The Time Book sample is used to
demonstrate the challenges of data synchronization.
Chapter 8, "Sybase UltraLite", shows you how applications are built
with UltraLite. A database model is designed to store the phone book
information and the Phone Book sample is modified to use UltraLite.
Chapter 9, "Oracle Lite Consolidator", shows you how applications are
built with the Consolidator. The Phone Book sample is modified to use
the Consolidator.
Chapter 10, "Conclusion", wraps everything up.
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Copyright ©1999 by Eric Giguere. All rights reserved.
From Palm Database Programming: The Complete Developer's Guide.
Reprinted here with permission from the publisher. Please see the
copyright
and disclaimer notices for more details.
If you find the material useful, consider buying one of
my books,
linking to this site from your own site or in your weblog,
or sending me a note.
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