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your Windows® embedded community
| Developing data driven applications on mobile devices can be a daunting task. Mobile devices are notoriously short on system resources (mostly memory). In most cases, only a small subset of data is needed. As a result, unlike other platforms, deciding on a database for your mobile application is a very important decision. What is Important? As with most development decisions, the choice of database is a balancing of benefits. You need to decide which features and limitations are the most important; there is no right answer in this article. But by looking at the differences in approach from each of the contenders, you can decide which is most important to you. Pocket PCs are not PCs. Mobile devices are fundamentally different, in that most of them work with a single data store for both what we would call "memory" and "disk" storage in the PC world. This changes the way we think about using memory. No longer can we differentiate between what we keep in memory and what we keep on disk. As a result, the database on the Pocket PC must be frugal with the amount of data that's kept on the device. Also, since applications shut down less frequently than do their PC brethren, you can assume that any database engine that is in use will take up memory longer than you might expect. The Contenders Not all of the options discussed in this article are products. Sometimes the right approach is not to use a product. This really depends on what you need from your database. |
