Hi all,
I have been reviewing articles on this newsgroup with regard to the
use of ADOCE and CE.NET platform.
The result of this review is that Microsoft recommends that for future
development that ADO.NET be used for data access.
I find this position problematic for headless devices.
Currently, we use ADOCE to access an OLEDB driver for a third party
from ASP pages on a headless device.
Microsoft's stand is that we should move to ADO.NET.
There are two problems with this for our targeted system.
1) ADO.NET requires the .NET Compact Framework and this is only
available on devices with display.
2) The addition of the .NET Compact Framework to the OS takes valuable
resources when it is really not needed for anything else.
I understand that Microsoft have a strategy for rolling out .NET
Framework and incorporating Windows CE into this framework, but I
think that they may have dropped the ball on this one.
When embedded devices are being developed there are many tradeoffs
made between cost and functionality - this is true whether the device
has a display or not. But being forced to add the .NET Compact
Framework because we wish to have database access from the Web Server
(for example), seems a bit heavy handed IMHO. It also (currently)
mandates a device with a display.
I think that some thought needs to be put into the realm of headless
devices and the functionality that they require.
What do others think?
Maybe we can get Microsoft to re-assess this situation for the future.
Regards,
Brian