Using .NET CF to create a "lunch launcher"

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Nov. 20, 2007

What is the "lunch launcher," and how did the store and forward messaging in Microsoft's .NET Compact Framework 3.5 allow it to be created? A new posting on the .NET Compact Framework Team's blog tells all.

"Several years ago, when I first joined the .NET Compact Framework team, we took some time (a week, if memory serves) to play with our product," writes team member David Kline (pictured at left). "At its heart, app building is an opportunity for us to get a feel for the experience our customers will have with our product."

"During that first app building week, many of us got together to brainstorm cool applications," Kline recalls. "One of these we called the 'lunch launcher.' In a nutshell, the lunch launcher would be a social application that allowed friends to invite each other to lunch at a specific time and collect votes for the desired restaurant. Shortly before the scheduled time to eat, a notification would be sent to everyone with the selected restaurant."

But, as he relates, the lunch launcher was an application whose time had not yet come. "It was not technically feasible to write a networked application that communicated point-to-point with other devices to schedule lunch, so we shelved the idea."

Microsoft's Roman Batoukov, also working on the problem, posted about the difficulties on his own blog in November of 2006. He wrote, "First of all, how do I address someone else's device? Device IP address is not stable and is not discoverable... This makes "push" scenarios and true P2P not feasible. Second, devices lose connectivity all the time and someone may be off-line when the message is sent."

The key, according to Kline, was the store-and-forward messaging feature that became part of .NET Compact Framework 3.5. Using the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) programming model, it is possible to send and receive data in any application equally easily using HTTP, TCP, or email. So lunch launcher, while not an email program per se, can use the transport to collect and manage data.

Now, Microsoft employees reportedly can escape the cafeteria and rendezvous at the off-campus location of their choice. Next up? A gussied-up version of lunch launcher that runs on Windows Mobile devices is said to be in the works.

Kline has created eight absorbing blog posts that trace the history of the lunch launcher, from conception to completion. They can be accessed on the .NET Compact Framework Team's blog, here.

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