Embedded Visual Basic Windows Ce And Pocket Pc Mobile Applications [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Using the Windows CE Emulators

Each Windows CE SDK comes with its own emulator, and the emulator can be a useful tool. It allows you to do some development without a physical device. Loading an application on the emulator is often faster than loading the application on a device through ActiveSync, and the emulator is convenient.

But bewarethe emulator isn't infallible. In fact, the emulator is about only 80 percent accurate in emulating device behavior. Obviously you can't do infrared, socket, or serial communications with the emulator because you can't physically connect to it, but the bigger problems arise when it simply behaves differently than an actual device.

Behavior differences crop up especially during database work. For example, doing a large number of record inserts to a table on the emulator almost always causes an error, but the same code on an actual device works fine.

To avoid the headache of trying to find errors that are emulator-caused, use the emulator to do initial screen layouts and GUI work, such as screen-to-screen navigation; but when you start doing the bulk of the work and application logic, develop directly on a physical device.