This book presents the basics of how to build mobile solutions using the Windows for the Pocket PC platform. The book is not oriented in a single direction; it mixes the developer and business aspects of the technology. I found this mix to be very useful. It’s not that easy to find introductory books or references that mix both aspects, and, from my point of view, they are tightly coupled.

Chapter 1 introduces a company called Acme Copier Inc., and offers details about its online and offline resources and installations. Chapter 2 presents a concise view of how to extend this enterprise, using mobile solutions. Chapter 3 describes how to systematically plan, design, and develop a successful Pocket PC mobile enterprise solution. Chapter 4 provides a description of how to use new tools in the Visual Basic (VB) language. Chapter 5, “Getting Started and Beyond,” presents the main elements of Embedded Visual Basic (eVB), and some useful tricks like wizard, programming the Pocket outlook object model (POOM), and so on. Chapter 6 discusses how to use databases in the Pocket PC, a very important aspect of the technology. Chapter 7 is concerned with the Pocket PC’s interaction with servers in corporate systems, to achieve performance and scalability, with a particular focus on Odyssey Software Inc.’s CEfusion. Chapter 8 describes how to use Pocket PCs as online thin clients. Chapters 9 and 10 present Acme Copier’s case study. Chapter 11 is about distributed Pocket PC applications. Chapter 12 presents an outlook for future Pocket PC applications. The conclusion provides suggestions for beginning a first mobile solution.

The book provides many code samples; this helps readers get real applications working. I found that using the Acme Copier examples throughout the chapters is a very good idea.

In general, I found this book to be very useful. I recommend it to developers, programmers, and, more particularly, businesses interested in concise information about how to build Pocket PC applications. Readers should have a basic knowledge of Windows, Internet information services (IIS), Active Server Pages (ASP), Structured Query Language (SQL) Server, the component object model (COM), distributed component object model (DCOM), and Visual Studio.