db design consideration

Hi,

I'm new to mobile development and currently we will adopt the .NET CF solution on pocket pc to develop a program to show customer information for our client.

I know that there is a SQL Server CE version running on .NET CF. When I write db related codes, is it just like say VB.NET, use dataadapter to send SQL to retrieve record from SQL CE?

In general, when designing db for mobile device, should we minimize join and complexity of SQL? If so, I may consider de-normalize some of my tables.

Please advise, thx!

Hi there,

For .Net CF i would not use DataAdapters the whole time, unless you need to populate datasets and datagrids. These are far more heavy on memory than the SQLCeDataReader which is more faster and efficent. It all depends on your needs

SQLServerCE is quite good as you can use Replication, Remote Date Access, have indexes etc.....

However in terms of queries it can be quiet limited in terms of aggregate functions

also Inner Selects are not allowed
You can still preforms Joins in SQLServerCE

Some Links
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ce/techinfo/20bol.mspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de..._functions.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...qlserverce.asp

Speed is more of an issue in CF (as Strider alluded to when talking about the problems with DataAdapters). If you have not used DataReaders, or returning scalar values, now would be an excellent time to learn. You very rarely need much information returned from a query in CF, because the screen size limits the number of user controls you can show. Therefore, for any one screen, you won't get very much data (usually), and returning scalar values becomes a better and faster option in some cases.