Getting started with Windows Mobile application framework

Overview

ArcGIS Mobile ships ready-to-deploy mobile application for Pocket PC and smartphone. This application is workflow-driven and data-centric, and is designed to help field workers perform data collection and feature inspection. It serves as a mobile client that can consume mobile services published on ArcGIS Server and has been optimized to communicate with server regarding data synchronization.

The ready-to-deploy mobile application has provided a few built-in tasks that can be used by field workers out of the box. It includes a ViewMapTask that allows users to view and navigate geospatial information, a CollectFeaturesTask that has various data collection methods for geometry collection and attribute editing, a SearchTask that can be used to make a query on datasets stored on a mobile device, a WorkListTask that can be used to store a collection of features for various purposes, and a SynchronizationTask that communicates with ArcGIS Server for data synchronization. Optionally, users can also use the FieldCrewTask or LoggingExtension to communicate with their field crews in a more convenient way.

However, all these tasks are built in and are provided as-is. What if your organization requires a different geometry collection method that's not readily available in the application? Or maybe you want to add a few custom functions to your VeiwMaptask so your workers can work in the way that they are most comfortable. There are many times when there is a need to customize the ready-to-deploy mobile application and make it work better for your organization's data collection and/or feature inspection procedure.

Application framework is provided for this purpose. It allows developers to either change the behavior of existing tasks and extensions or create new tasks/extensions for new workflow/functionality. By developing a custom Task or ProjectExtension and deploying it to your user's mobile device, your field crew can use it and improve their efficiency.

The application framework provides a set of APIs that you can leverage to extending the ready-to-deploy mobile application. To learn the key concepts and architecture of the application framework, see the Summary diagram.

Note that the application framework is built on top of core mobile SDK and thus has dependency on core SDK ESRI.ArcGIS.Mobile.dll assembly.

The following diagram shows the relationship between core mobile SDK and framework SDK.

For more details on the general design and architecture of the application framework (for both Windows and Windows Mobile), see Overivew of application framework. ArcGIS Mobile provides application framework API for both Windows and Windows Mobile platforms. Both sets of APIs share the same design and architecture and therefore have similar classes and functions. However, they are not identical due to the differences in their target operating systems.

To learn more techniques on the design and architecture of the application framework specific to Windows Mobile platform, see Using application framework (Windows Mobile)—An overview.

For more samples and up-to-date information, see ArcGIS Mobile Resource Center.