Component based programming in mobile devices: The future of mobile device development?

Advances in hardware has enabled mobile devices to support competing technologies such as Microsoft NET compact edition, Java Micro Edition and AppForge Piedmont Framework which enable component based programming in mobile devices. Software components are reusable pieces of software modules that can be used very much like Lego blocks to build applications. Components are binary compatible and therefore provide benefits such as reusability, modularity and portability. This paper presents three underlining technologies that enable component based programming in mobile devices and a case study of component development in the AppForge Piedmont framework. The case study is about developing a GIS component to extend Appforge's mobile Visual Basic. GIS (Geographic information systems) allows geographic information to be, displayed with its corresponding map. For example, ArcPad from ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) [1] provides a mobile GIS solution to Windows, CE devices but a drawback of such a product is that it does not support a wide range of mobile devices. AppForge Piedmont Framework and other technologies provide a way to solve these kinds of problem in the embedded setting and we believe it presents the future of mobile device development.