| Printable Version
MSMQ on Pocket PC 2003
By Klaus Salchner
Introduction
A few years ago mainstream software development was all about desktops
and servers, both being Personal Computers. This is rapidly changing as more
and more devices emerge. Today's world has Smartphones, Pocket PCs, Tablet
PCs, Media Centers and many more to emerge. As complex as it is to
understand all these devices and their differences, Microsoft has made it
equally complex
it to understand the different Windows brands – Windows Embedded,
Windows CE, Windows Mobile, etc. A few years ago it seemed to be cool and
bleeding edge to support different devices other then the mainstream PC. But
as more devices emerge and as it becomes easier to develop software for
those devices, the more rapidly consumers and corporations will adopt them.
A
few years from now it will be essential to support such devices and for
developers to have experience with development on such devices. This article
builds on top of the existing article "MSMQ, your reliable asynchronous
message processing". It will show how MSMQ can be used on Pocket PC 2003 and
at the same time provide an introduction to mobile development and the
Compact Framework (CF).
Understanding the different Windows brands
Microsoft uses three main Windows brands. Each brand is targeted towards a
different set of devices. There are gray areas between the different brands,
but the device to support will determine which Windows version to use:
- Windows
Embedded – This encompasses all versions of Windows targeted towards
any device other then the PC (desktop and server). Windows Embedded
consists of two main brands – Windows XP Embedded and Windows CE.
- Windows
XP Embedded – This is a componentized version of Windows XP
Professional. Thus you select from the existing Windows XP Professional
components which ones you want to include in your OS image. This allows you
to
create smaller OS images for different devices while still supporting any
Windows-based application (as long as the components the application
requires are included in the OS image). Windows XP Embedded only supports
Intel x86 hardware and is not a real time OS. Examples would be kiosks,
retail devices, ATM's, etc.
-
Windows CE – Is a real time operating system which also supports
platforms other than Intel x86. It is not bound to a specific device but
rather contains components to support a wide variety of small devices.
- Windows
Mobile – Microsoft created Windows Mobile to provide a rich
experience for end users as well as to provide strict guidelines for Pocket
PCs
and Smartphones. Windows Mobile only runs on devices which support the
Windows Mobile standard. The three main types of devices supported are:
- Pocket
PC – Windows-based PDAs which support WiFi and Bluetooth and
provide mobile Word, mobile Excel, mobile Outlook and more.
- Smartphones
– Mobile phones which also support emailing, text messaging, web browsing
and instant messaging.
- Pocket
PC phone editions – For devices which combine PDA-type features with
your mobile phone. This supports all features of Pocket PC and
Smartphone.
The diagram below visualizes the three brands. This is not a complete
diagram but rather concentrates on the Windows CE and Windows Mobile brands.
It also shows the development tools available to build applications on these
platforms.
This MSDN article answers a number of questions about how to develop
for these devices and platforms.
Microsoft also ships a Compact Framework used to build .NET applications for
Windows CE and Windows Mobile (both Windows Pocket PC and Windows
Smartphone).
Building your Pocket PC 2003 application
When you create a new project you can select the project type (list on the
left side). Under Visual Basic and under Visual C# you see an entry called
"Smart Device". Underneath it you find Pocket PC 2003, Smartphone 2003 and
Windows CE. These are the three different devices you can use the Compact
Framework on and which VS.NET 2005 allows you to create applications for.
You
can create for each an application (Windows forms), class library or control
library (not supported for Smartphones). This by default references the
Compact Framework. Under the references you suddenly also see an "mscorlib",
which is the "mscorlib" for the Compact Framework. When you add new
references you see also that the list is smaller. That is because the
Compact Framework only supports a subset of the full framework. The Compact
Framework 2.0 added the System.Messaging assembly/namespace which provides
full support for MSMQ on Pocket PC and Windows CE but not for Smartphones.
Windows forms is available for all three devices and differs from the
traditional desktop Windows forms in that the screen size available is much
smaller. The designer shows a fixed-size window which reflects the size
available on selected devices. How to add controls through the toolbox, how
to position and resize it, how to set its properties and how to add event
handlers is the same as for the traditional desktop Windows forms. The list
of properties and events will be shorter as not all are supported by the
Compact Framework, or more specifically by the devices themselves.
When running the application the VS.NET IDE shows a deployment dialog. You
can choose where to deploy and run the application. VS.NET provides
Emulators so you can run and test the applications without requiring an
actual physical device. Emulators are available for Pocket PC 2003,
Smartphone 2003 and Windows CE 5.0. You can also choose a form factor,
meaning the skin used when showing the device in the emulator. For example
you can choose between a "Pocket PC 2003 Portrait" and a "Pocket PC Phone
2003 Portrait".
Running on a Pocket PC 2003 Emulator
Choose "Pocket PC 2003 SE Emulator" to deploy and run your application on
the Pocket PC Emulator. This starts a virtual machine and loads the Pocket
PC 2003 OS into that virtual machine. Devices like Pocket PCs and
Smartphones can utilize an Intel x86 processor or an ARM (Advanced RISC Machines
) processor. The emulators which come with VS.NET are emulating ARM-based
devices. All device emulator images are stored in the following location -
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Visual Studio 8\SmartDevices\Emulators\Images".
You find the Pocket PC image under the sub folder "PocketPC\2003\1033" and
the Smartphone image under the sub folder "Smartphone\2003\1033". Keep in
mind that because emulators are emulating a Pocket PC or Smartphone it will
always be slower then an actual device itself.
The emulator window shows a Pocket PC booting up, like a real Pocket PC. It
then asks in the emulator window if the Pocket PC is connected to the
Internet or Work - choose "The Internet". Since this is the first time the
emulator is started and no Compact Framework is yet loaded, VS.NET first
deploys the Compact Framework onto the emulator. After that VS.NET shows
again the dialog to choose where to deploy the application (it is unclear to
me why this is required, but if you always deploy to the same device or
emulator you can unselect the option "Show me this dialog each time I deploy
the application"). Now VS.NET starts deploying your application files onto
the Pocket PC emulator. When completed VS.NET will start the application on
the Pocket PC while remotely connecting to it so you can debug the
application remotely. In our example it will show an exception as soon as a
System.Messaging type gets loaded and called. This is the case because MSMQ
is not yet installed and configured on your Pocket PC emulator.
Loading and installing MSMQ on the Pocket PC emulator
You can tell the VS.NET IDE to upload not just the project files but also
any other files you need to get onto the Emulator. The MSMQ redistributable
files can be found at the following location - "C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Visual Studio 8\SmartDevices\SDK\SDKRedist\MSMQ".
Because the emulator is ARM-based we take them from the ARM sub folder. Add
all six files to the project and set "Build Action" in the file properties
(in VS.NET) to "Content". All files marked as content will be deployed in
the same folder as your project. To change the location where your
application gets deployed to, bring up the Project properties (in VS 2005
double click on the item Properties). Go to the "Device" tab and change the
"Output file folder". This by default always points to "\Program Files"
followed by your project name. Also any files you marked with "Content" in
the build action are deployed into this folder. To deploy your application
again, run it again, or choose "Build | Deploy Solution". After redeploying
the application, go to the Pocket PC emulator window so we can setup MSMQ on
it.
The basics of using the Pocket PC Emulator
The Emulator shows you Pocket PC as it would be on any real Pocket PC
device. In the upper left corner you see the "Windows start button". Click
on the start button and it will show the start menu. Select "Programs" to
bring up the installed programs, one of them being the "File Explorer". Open
the "File Explorer" by double clicking on it which shows by default the "My
Documents" folder. Click on the white space at the bottom of the file
explorer and keep the mouse pressed till the popup menu shows. Select from
the menu "View All Files" so we see all files. Right under the Windows start
button in the upper left corner it shows "My Documents" with a down arrow.
This is your current location and clicking on the down arrow brings up a
menu. Click on it and select "My Device" to jump to the root folder of your
device. Next double click on "Program Files". This shows the "Program Files"
folder where you see a "NET CF 2.0" folder where VS.NET deployed the Compact
Framework as well as an "MSMQ Pocket PC" folder where our application has
been deployed. Now we want to copy the MSMQ redistributable files to the
Windows folder. Go to the "MSMQ Pocket PC folder" and select the following
six files (by holding down the CTRL key and clicking on each file) – visadm,
msmqrt, msmqd, msmqadmext, mqoa and msmqadm. Click on one of the selected
files and hold down the mouse till the popup menu shows, then select "Copy".
Next click again on the arrow beside the current folder location (right
under the Windows start button) and select "My Device" from the menu. This
shows again the root folder of the device. Double click on the "Windows"
folder, press the END key to jump to the end of the file list, click on an
empty space and hold the mouse key down till the menu appears and select
"Paste". Now all six files have been copied to the Windows folder.
Next we configure MSMQ on this Pocket PC. This requires changing the default
Pocket PC name. Click on the Windows start button and select "Settings" from
the start menu. Select the "System" tab at the bottom and then double click
on the "About" icon in the list. This shows the Windows "about" screen.
Select
the tab "Device ID" at the bottom which shows the current Device name as
"Pocket_PC". Change the name to something like "EnterpriseMinds" and click
the Ok button in the upper right corner. This brings you back to the
Settings screen which you can close with the "X" in the upper right corner.
This brings you back to the File Explorer which still shows the files we
copied into the Windows folder. Double click on "visadm" to bring up the
visual MSMQ administrator console. Click on the "Shortcuts" button and
select "Install" from the menu. Click again on the "Shortcuts" button and
select "Register" this time. Next we need to restart the Pocket PC for the
changes to take effect. Click on the "Exit" button to close "visadm" and
next on the Emulator window itself click on the "Power button" (upper right
corner). This will ask you if you are sure and you say yes which shuts down
the device, shows a black screen and then boots it up again (this may take a
while). Now we have reset the device and we want to check if MSMQ has been
set up properly. Go back to the File Explorer, which now also appears in the
start menu and by default jumps back into the Windows folder. Start "visadm"
again, click on the "Shortcut" button and select "Verify". This shows that
MSMQ has been properly installed. Now we can go back and run our sample
application. First close "visadm" with the "X" in the upper right corner, as
well as the File Explorer. Run again the sample application from your VS.NET
IDE, which will redeploy any changed files, then launch our sample
application while still being connected to it remotely so you can debug
through the VS.NET IDE.
Changes to the MSMQ Pocket PC sample application
This sample application is based on the original desktop application
attached to the article "MSMQ, your reliable asynchronous message
processing". There are five main differences in the MessageQueueManager
type:
- GetMessageQueueProperties() – The MessageQueue type does not
support the following four properties – Authenticate, Category,
EncryptionRequired and MulticastAddress. These four properties have been
removed.
- GetMessageDetails() – The Message type does not support the
following ten properties – AttachSenderId, Authenticated,
AuthenticationProviderName, AuthenticationProviderType, ConnectorType,
EncryptionAlgorithm, LookupId, TransactionStatusQueue, UseAuthentication and
UseEncryption. These ten properties have been removed.
- StartTransaction() – The type MessageQueueTransaction is not
supported at all. Only single message transactions are supported. So we
completely removed this method.
- SendMessage() – Instead
of using a MessageQueueTransaction type we use the
MessageQueueTransactionType enumeration to specify if this message is sent
under a single-message-transaction or non-transactional.
- GetListOfPrivateMessageQueues() – Used Environment.MachineName
which is not supported by the Compact Framework. This is set by default to
"." which means local machine.
All other System.Messaging types are fully supported. MSMQ on Pocket PC 2003
only allows you to work with local private message queues (no remote private
queues and no public queues).
Some more useful comments on the Emulator and CF
This MSDN article answers a wealth of questions when it comes to
developing with the Compact Framework. When exiting the emulator it asks you
if you want to save the state. This allows you to save its current state,
for example our MSMQ configuration, changes to the device ID, etc. This also
means that VS.NET doesn't have to deploy the Compact Framework next time as
it is already on the device. Next time the emulator is started up it
remembers that exact state. You can reset the emulator, which will remove
all
saved state and bring the emulator back to its original configuration. In
the emulator window click on the menu "File | Reset".
Your emulated Pocket PC has an IP address assigned to it. Open up the
settings (select Settings from the Windows start menu), select the
"Connections" tab and then double click on the "Network Cards" icon. Out of
the box the network card "NE2000 Compatible Ethernet Driver" is mapped to
the physical network card on your machine. Through that the Pocket PC gets
network access. The drop down list "My network card connects to" has the
value "The Internet" selected out of the box. Leave this value and click on
the NE2000 driver. This brings up a window which shows you the current IP
address. Ping that IP address from your physical machine and you will see
that you get a response back. Click ok in the upper right corner, click ok
to the message shown and then ok to close the connections window.
If you have no network connectivity or use an ISP which only allows a few
named machines to connect to the ISP but you already used all of those, then
use the "Microsoft Loopback Adapter". Choose the "Add hardware" wizard from
the control panel. It will first try to detect any new hardware and then ask
you if the hardware has already been connected. Answer yes and from the
following list select the item "Add a new hardware device". Next select the
option "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list" and then
select from the following list the item "Network adapter". From the list
select the "Microsoft Loopback Adapter" and finish the installation of this
adapter. When the adapter has been installed, open up the properties of the
"My Network Places". You will see a new "Local Area Connection". Open its
properties, select the item "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and open its
properties. Choose the option "Use the following IP address" and enter as IP
address "192.168.0.1" and as subnet mask "255.255.255.0" Click ok twice to
save the new IP settings for this "Microsoft Loopback Adapter". Finally we
need to configure the Pocket PC Emulator to use this Loopback Adapter. In
the VS.NET IDE go to the menu "Tools | Options" and then in the list on the
left side choose the option "Device Tools" and then underneath it "Devices".
This shows the list of devices on the right side. Select the item "Pocket PC
2003 SE Emulator" and click on the Properties button. On the new dialog
click on the "Emulator Properties" button and on the next dialog choose the
"Network" tab. The option "Enable NE2000 PCMCIA Network Adapter to bind to"
is enabled and in the drop down below it has the item "Connected network
card" selected. From the drop down list choose the "Microsoft Loopback
Adapter" and click ok three times to save the settings of each dialog. Next
launch the Pocket PC Emulator through the menu "Tools | Connect to Device",
select the "Pocket PC 2003 SE Emulator from the list of devices to
launch and click the "Connect" button. In the Pocket PC Emulator click on
the "Windows start button" and select Settings from the start menu. Select
the tab "Connections" at the bottom and double click on the "Network Cards"
icon. The drop down list "My network card connects to" has the option "The
Internet" selected. Keep that selection and click on the "NE2000 Compatible
Ethernet Driver". In the new window select the option "Use specific IP
address" and enter as IP address "192.168.0.2" and as subnet mask
"255.255.255.0". Click on ok in the upper right corner, click ok on the
message box and again ok to close the "Connections" window. Finally we want
to test if we have connectivity (which assumes you have an IIS running on
your local physical machine). Click on the "Windows start button" and select
"Internet Explorer" from the start menu. In the address bar type in the URL
for your local IIS which is "http://192.168.0.1". This brings up the home
page of your local IIS.
You can also share a folder on your local machine and connect to it through
the Pocket PC Emulator which makes it easy to copy files onto the Pocket PC.
First share a folder (right click on the folder and select "Sharing and
security", select the option "Share this folder" and enter a name, for
example MSMQ) and make sure that everyone has "read" rights to it. In the
Pocket PC Emulator open the File Explorer and then click on the "Open"
button in the lower left corner. In the new window type in the network path
to connect to, for example "\192.168.0.1\msmq" which then opens that share
and you can copy files onto your Pocket PC. Please note that with VS 2005
Beta1 I was unable to do this while using the "Microsoft Loopback Adapter".
It showed the error "The network path was not found".
When you close applications on the Pocket PC with the "X" in the upper right
corner, this does not really close the application. It just hides the
window so it appears to be closed to the user. This is to improve overall
responsiveness of the Pocket PC. You can check which applications are
running and can close them. Click on the "Windows start button" and select
"Settings" from the start menu. Select the tab "System" at the bottom and
double click on the icon "Memory". It shows the total memory available and
how much is used at the moment. Click on the tab "Running Programs" to see a
list of running programs. Select the one desired and click "Stop" to close
the program or click "Stop All" to stop all programs.
Summary
Developing mobile applications, whether for Windows CE, Pocket PC or
Smartphones can be a daunting task at the beginning, mostly due to the fact
that there are many new things to learn – the Compact Framework, the Pocket
PC interface, how to work with the Pocket PC emulator, etc. The bigger issue
is not that it is very complex to do but rather just getting a good
introduction to it. Unfortunately the documentation available is rather
lacking. This article hopefully gives you a very good introduction about
mobile development, about the Pocket PC interface and how to work with the
Pocket PC emulator. After getting over that initial learning curve you will
see that it is very easy to developer mobile applications with the Compact
Framework and to test and debug them with the available emulators. If you
have comments on this article, please contact me @ klaus_salchner@hotmail.com. I
want to hear if you learned something new. Contact me if you have questions
about this topic or article.
Download Source
About the author
Klaus Salchner has worked for 14 years in the industry, nine years in Europe
and another five years in North America. As a Senior Enterprise Architect
with solid experience in enterprise software development, Klaus spends
considerable time on performance, scalability, availability,
maintainability, globalization/localization and security. The projects he
has been involved in are used by more than a million users in 50 countries
on three continents.
Klaus calls Vancouver, British Columbia his home at the moment. His next
big
goal is doing the New York marathon in 2005. Klaus is interested in guest
speaking opportunities or as an author for .NET magazines or Web sites. He
can be contacted at
klaus_salchner@hotmail.com or http://www.enterprise-minds.com
.
Enterprise application architecture and design consulting services are
available. If you want to hear more about it contact me! Involve me in your
projects and I will make a difference for you. Contact me if you have an
idea for an article or
research project. Also contact me if you want to co-author an article or
join future
research projects!
Edited by Dwight Johnson
|
