The offline application block is definitely designed for a CF app...I
believe that was the primary purpose for it. It is definitely suitable for
the situation you describe and I am considering it for the same situation.
From my limited understanding after reading the MSDN docs
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpag/html/offline.asp,
they do provide a very sophisticated and scalable architecture for
supporting this scenerio, however, you do still have to do a considerable
amount of plumbing code to get your app to work. It does not appear to me as
simple as the Data Access block where you could simply plug in and use it
immediately (and it works beautifully - thanks MS!).
For example, in order to queue up messages while offline, they provide a
provider for using MSMQ or MSDE. This seems a little much for most
situations and a little out of the experience of most developers. I would
much prefer just to have an interface to a xml queue where I can simple take
my datasets and continually save to a xml file while offline. Then, on
reconnect, read the xml back into datasets and update the server. This
sounds very reasonable, but with no understanding of using the XML dom or
namespace, it will take me a while, so it would have been nice to have all
that plumbing written for me
.
The docs referenced above are really good and seem very thorough. They also
provide a sample app which implements the block.
Another sample app to consider which provides a solution to the offline
problem, is the Pocket TaskVision app:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...30-339E-41CE-BE8B-0358A94EE4E7&displaylang=en
hope this helps
Rob Beers said:
Is the offline application block designed for a compact framework application?
If so, would it be suitable for a wireless application that is chatty with
a desktop server that is sometimes disconnected because of RF failures?
