Mobile Computing Software Development

Mobile computing has gained momentum and grown rapidly in recent years. Portable computing devices such as notebooks, palmtops, and handheld devices are readily available and are becoming quite common. Some devices have an embedded, proprietary operating system (OS), while other devices have an embedded, commercially available OS allowing different models to have the same base OS. If development tools exist, developers should find porting an application to a different device using the same OS far easier than to one using a completely different OS. This paper examines issues for the development of an operating systems’ course laboratory assignment using a commercial OS. The embedded system platform that is targeted for this laboratory assignment is a H/PC device using the Microsoft Windows CE operating system. Commercial developer’s tools for these platforms and environments from Microsoft are used. The primary software result of this assignment is to develop parts of an application that are used to create a time client and an FTP client using the Windows CE Toolkit for Visual C++ 6.0. This paper discusses the software development products that are explored for developing the laboratory assignment and the target platforms and environments. We discuss the paths and pitfalls for developing software in this environment and how this will effect a course laboratory assignment.