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Java(TM) Development on PDAs: Building Applications for Pocket PC and Palm Devices Review by Normann Aaboe Nielsen
Do yourself a favor: Buy this book
When you want to dive into the field of actually program a wireless device you can easily find yourself become confused. One question is simply: What do I need to get going with the first project. And although it is a simple question to ask, it is not yet a simple question to answer, because it depends! The dependency is what device you want to address and what options you have when you want to develop an application.
This book is written by a humble and very competent programmer. He is humble because he just want to tell us how to code a PDA, be it PocketPC or Palm. He does not want to demonstrate much more than this. And this is how it should be, given the title of the book, because what he does is telling us all the steps needed. Here the authors competence really shows.
The book starts with a brief introduction to the J2ME configurations, the CLDC and the CDC API's. Continuing then to the MIDP profile where the author already demonstrates a simple generic MIDP applet. The next two chapters really rocks the boat: Here is compared the Palm and the PocketPC platforms with regard to J2ME, so if you have the choice then you can easily decide what to go for. In any case you will here find the most needed information: What development environment should you use for a specific platform - and where do you get it. The author brings links to a collection of no-cost tools and what more: All the links are correct!
At this point you really must begin to program at least a "Hello World" program for you selected platform. McBride helps you with every step in this for both platforms. He discusses JDBC, Internet access from the PDA's and how to use misc. connection methods, for example Infrared Connections or Mobile Phone. Everything is demonstrated with very good screen pictures of the PDA's or good program lists. He even demonstrates how to use web-services and the SOAP clients.
The last part of the book deals with the future, meaning technologies such as JXTA (dynamic peer-to-peer network) and ideas about Jini. Bluetooth was already demonstrated earlier in the book. Again, everything is written clearly and makes you want to start the programming now.
The book is highly recommendable! On no more than 239 pages including the index you'll get all what is needed to start doing your own development with confindence that it will work. I really believe that all the code in the book was tested. Do yourself a favor: Buy this book if you want to program JAVA on the PDA's!