Microsoft® .NET Compact Framework (Core Reference) (Hardcover)

You do need Visual Studio .NET 2003 to develop apps for the Compact Framework. The book does a cursory job of explaining VS.NET, but a good job of explaining the emulators included with it. Unfortunately .NET is not an environment a hobbyist can pick up anymore like eVB might have been. You need to understand object orientation now, which if you haven't done it before, is a hurdle that takes people a little bit to get over. And things like the additional worry about security, Web Services, and ADO.NET (which requires knowledge of data modeling) have made it even more complex. This is a "professional" book written for experienced people.

The book does an excellent job of explaining interaction with a host SQL Server, fully covering RDA and merge replication. Throughout the book it points out the differences between the full .NET Framework and the Compact Framework as it addresses each subject. There are significant differences between the full framework and the compact onewhen working with SQL Server and the book handles them well.

It also covers graphics programming as well as you'll need for any business application, with examples of some nice charts and pie graphs. It also covers security fairly well and touches on interacting with Web Services. There is no real coverage of ASP.NET.

I'm usually not a huge fan of Microsoft Press books because they're sometimes incomplete while at the same time not very concise. Not the case with this one. Even though it's 700 pages, there isn't the usual 400 pages of inconsequential filler to waste your time with as in most other large programming books. I feel that this is probably the only book I will need to buy on the Compact Framework.

You will find introductions to the classes of the .NET framework that exist on both desktop and CF. These are very good descriptions and even though there are deeper explanations in other books, here you have the confidence that everything described is applicable without having to check elsewhere for supported classes/methods. If you are very familiar with the desktop version you will be able to skim through a good half of the material in the book just noting the differences.

There are areas which are new to the CF or just very different from the desktop and these are covered well, including deployment, infrared comms and SqlServerCe. The winform controls have fewer methods than their desktop counterparts and as such you will have to create custom controls fairly often so the chapter on this subject is very valuable and well written. You will also have to interoperate with native code and the chapter on that is good including an excellent description of the CF-specific MessageWindow component.

Two areas are briefly touched upon and deserve much more attention: Targeting both the desktop and compact frameworks from the same projects and COM interoperability. I would have also liked a chapter on performance considerations since, naturally, speed and memory are of particular interest to anybody developing on small devices; a search on the cf newsgroup emphasizes this point.

The book ends with a useful appendix listing the framework namespaces and classes with a short description accompanying the ones that are supported on the CF. I am not including a list of the contents here but it is worth going through them to get a fuller picture. They are very accurate as you'd expect from a book that is well written with few if any grammatical/syntactical mistakes (although a couple of harmless factual errors crept in).

The .NETcf is in RTM and available through VS 2003 (public release expected end of April 03). It is no surprise that this is the only book on it available now which is why I could have given it 5 stars... However there are no groundbreaking ideas in the book and most info is available on the web...

1. .NET Compact Framework Architecture
This section mainly goes through the history of PDAs, starting with the first portable computer, the Osborne-1. It then compares the different development tools with .NET, such as eMbedded Visual Basic. It does a great job explaining the .NET framework fundamentals (CLR, MSIL...), as well as what the .NET compact framework is all about. For those who aren't familiar with .NET, this is a great beginning to your .NET journey. If you are already familiar with .NET, just skim through it since you probably already know most of what this section contains.

2. Developing Applications with the .NET Compact Framework
This section goes through building the GUI and windows forms, testing and debugging your application, and completing and distributing your applications. This section is very well written and has been helpful. It goes through building different controls and what problems you may have to think about because of the limited form size on PDAs. It also talks about all the debugging functionality .NET has built into it, such as breakpoints, exception handling, and watching variables. Probably the mort important part is completing and distributing your application and it does a satisfactory job, although the book didn't actually go through a full example.

3. Common Programming Tasks
This section talks about different collection classes, such as arrays, arraylists, and stacks. It also discusses date and string manipulation. XML, File I/O, networking, and security each have a chapter dedicated to each subject. I spent most of my time with XML and security in this section.

4. Connecting With Data
This section goes through ADO.NET. It does a fantastic job of describing each .NET data object and has plenty of code to show how to use each. I got a bit confused some of the time due to the number of ADO.NET objects out there. Also, it talks about connecting your data with SQL Server, XML web services, and SQL Server CE. Plan on spending a lot of your time in each of these chapters, although I kind of skimmed through the SQL Server section since I plan on storing data locally in SQL Server CE and using RDA/XML web services to connect the data to enterprise systems. For those of you who are new to .NET, this part of the book is well worth the money.

5. Advanced Mobile Application Development
This section goes through custom controls, globalization/localization, multithreading, graphics programming, interoperating with native code, and cross-framework development, i.e. migrating eMbedded Visual applications. I didn't spend much time in this part because by the time I was done with ADO.NET, I was ready to rock.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this book. If you want to do PDA development, definitely get this book (I think at this time, it's the only resource book out there anyways). Whether you are seasoned .NET programmer, or someone new, this book is a definite must have in your library.