Mobile Palm Development

[Douglas Burch]

Chris (Brown),

Were you going to post something on the Yahoo group site about your
Palm development? It sounded like you've been successful with that
effort, and I'd like to get up to speed with the process.

We have a group here, in the DFG - Northern Region, that already has
develped a palm-Access system for collectin spawner survey data, and
would like to synchronize directly with SQL Server. The units that
they are using are the Meazura "Ruggedized Digital Assistant," RDA
from Aceeca (sturdy and waterproof units that look a little like a
Trimbe GeoXT, though a bit smaller).

They don't really need to be mobile, but could be sync'ed back at
the office as there is no real reason to do it in the field (and
there would be little to no satelite coverage anyway).

Also, I was told that they Pendragon Forms will work with Windows
CE, so will be checking out that possibility as well.

Thanks, Doug

[Christopher W Brown]

Doug,

Yes, we do intend to send out a link, we just wanted to update the ERD and
clean out some old debris.... hopefully by early next week I'll post a
link with a login and password for folks on this group.

As for Pendragon Forms with Windows CE, my experience has been this:

The version of Pendragon which runs native on the SQL Server at minimum
works....   It utilizes SQL CE (PDA license comes with the pendragon).
Because Windows CE machines have about 10 times the overhead of the Palm
Pilots, the forms on comparable units run 10 times faster on the Palm
Pilots.  However, because the Windows CE machines make use of the SQL CE
database (as opposed to the Palm Pilot file system), large amounts of data
collection do not slow the PDA's down.   Soooo.... a Palm Pilot that has
been in the field for a few days of intensive data collection will
eventually slow down to the performance level of the Windows CE machines.
This is the Enterprise Version 5.0 and I do not know when or whether this
will be updated to Enterprise 5.1 (if it already has, your set).

Nowww.....

The current desktop version of Pendragon (5.1) which utilizes MS Access
uses a file based system on the Windows  PDAs and a different presentation
of the forms.  This makes the forms run in an identical fashion and with
the same speed as the Palm Pilots.  This is advantageous enough that I'm
running the local copy (5.1) field mapped to the SQL Server (this is a
simple utility that Pendragon put in utilizing the desktop's ODBC
connections).  The same forms are merely imported by the local desktop
interface.  This way, I have really fast forms running on the Windows PDAs
but still have the data synchronizing with the served database on SQL
Server.  Not ideal, but it works.

The forms I was running this last year keep about 2 months of data on the
PDAs as reference data (for QA and Lookup purposes on ongoing trapping)
and they did not slow down for me, but I was not doing anything as
intensive as  repeated vegetation surveys.

Chris

___________________________________________
Chris Brown
U.S. Geological Survey, Western Ecological Research Center
4165 Spruance Road, Suite 200
San Diego, CA 92101

[phone]
cwbrown@...



"Douglas Burch" <dburch@...>
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12/13/2007 09:44 AM
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[dfgpda] Mobile Palm Development






Chris (Brown),

Were you going to post something on the Yahoo group site about your
Palm development? It sounded like you've been successful with that
effort, and I'd like to get up to speed with the process.

We have a group here, in the DFG - Northern Region, that already has
develped a palm-Access system for collectin spawner survey data, and
would like to synchronize directly with SQL Server. The units that
they are using are the Meazura "Ruggedized Digital Assistant," RDA
from Aceeca (sturdy and waterproof units that look a little like a
Trimbe GeoXT, though a bit smaller).

They don't really need to be mobile, but could be sync'ed back at
the office as there is no real reason to do it in the field (and
there would be little to no satelite coverage anyway).

Also, I was told that they Pendragon Forms will work with Windows
CE, so will be checking out that possibility as well.

Thanks, Doug

 


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Christopher W Brown]

Hey all,

Here is a link to our center's multi-taxa data management quick place.  It
is in its infancy, so I hope to have it more developed soon.  The nice
thing about it is that is is a place where our crew can go themselves and
easily add pages/information and upload documents and comments.

Please feel free to take a look around.   We do have some secured rooms in
the site for data upload and distribution, etc..  If individuals would
like to see how we are doing that, please contact me for an individual
login.

https://quickplacepubwr.wr.usgs.gov/QuickPlace/brdsandiego/PageLibrary85257399006AA089.nsf/h_Toc/CE6A3D6B1F546C9405256708001671FF/?OpenDocument

Here is a generalized login and password:
cdfguser
multitaxa

Thanks,

Chris

___________________________________________
Chris Brown
U.S. Geological Survey, Western Ecological Research Center
4165 Spruance Road, Suite 200
San Diego, CA 92101

[phone]
cwbrown@...

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]