Re: Delphi and smart-devices

From: Peter Overweel (peter.overweel_at_kooijman.nl)
Date: 02/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 13:18:51 +0100

"Danny Thorpe" <dthorpe@bozofilter.borland.com> wrote in message
news:421d1dc9$1@newsgroups.borland.com...
> Borland's options for CF support are:
> 1. Wait for Microsoft to support third party development on the CF
> platform.
> 2. Reverse engineer the VS CF designer architecture to build our own
> designer against the CF framework. Reverse engineering a black box as
> big as the .NET framework is a very expensive proposition. This route
> runs a very high risk of litigation and exposure to unknowns hidden
> inside the black box.
> 3. Build something else that runs on the CF IL platform but not using
> Microsoft proprietary bits. This gives us the greatest freedom and
> flexibility, but also the greatest cost to develop. This option will
> always be playing catch-up. This option is also the least attractive
> to Microsoft, since it threatens to split the CF platform into
> incompatible camps just like Win CE's fatal fragmentation.
>

Danny,

With all due respect, your answer raises some questions:
- Does your answer imply the only thing lacking is(are) the "CF
Designer(s)"?
  (All other dotNet designers needn't be reverse engineered, so how
expensive can it be?)
- And if so, isn't Borland capable of building its own (improvised) designer
anymore?
  (Delphi Win32 designers always have been improvised if I'm not mistaken)
- And is that the reason why Borland is waiting on Microsoft technology for
three years now?
... :-( ...
..now I'm worried...

I can hardly believe its just a matter on the CF designer(s). I rather think
it's a matter on debugging on a emulator or handheld device. That would
explain why the technology is so tightly integrated with Visual Studio.

> ...CF development would be a great feature to round out our tool suite and
would drive
> additional sales of the tool suites, but it is not hugely lucrative
> market by itself - certainly not as lucrative as Win32 or .NET
> development as a whole.

As you could guess I don't agree on this. Therefore I state the following:
The way software-builders will support handheld devices may differ. They can
use browser-technology, use Smart-clients or perhaps some other technology.
Only a few large software-vendors will make handheld-software for private
use like Photo/MP3/Video-viewers, Radio/Television-receivers, Games and an
occasional PDA-editor. Most handheld applications will never be really
fancy, but it will bring the multi-user solution for the companies and
employees outside, much more than laptops ever can. For those with little
imagination: think "shared agendas & planning", "actual inventory",
"photo's/video's", "GPS", "telephone-conversations/memo-recorders",
"entry-tickets", "(parking-)fines", etcetera. My humble prediction is that
all software-vendors that sell administrative multi-user solutions will
loose new business opportunities to their competitors if they don't add
these handheld-enrichements to their current software within a relatively
short time-span. And a lot of Delphi applications are all about
administrative multi-user solutions. Delphi currently only offers support
via always-online-browser-technology which may or may not be sufficient, but
is still rather expensive due to current GPRS-costs. Our
development-departement already developed in Visual Studio a smartclient
application to upload pictures taken with a Smartphone to our server and
download Business Information to catalog the picture before uploading. I
think most Delphi-developers can think of useful applications like this for
their own customers which can make all the difference in their sales.

Off course I can be wrong on the worth of the market and the actual
technology-issue. But when I'm right, it will have implications.

Peter O.

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