Podcasts to Zire

The first project I want to do with my Zire will be to setup a system for Podcasting. I'm thinking I could either plug into FeedDemon or create a standalone app. Then I would want to push it to the Zire (PalmOS) through HotSync.

I'll post updates and I make progress.

Stored Procedure Logic

Rik Hemsley wrote a little post on "Stored Procedures vrs Dynamic/Embedded SQL". Neat comparison!

Personally I like to think of the database as its own black box. In itself there should be rules and logic necessary to keep data integrity. That's where I lean on StoredProcs heavily.

There are a lot of design patterns out there that pull the business logic out of the database and into some sort of business tier. That's fine but I believe you can efficiently split that logic into something that maps closely to the database especially when transactions are needed.

I do my best to avoid 'monolithic transactions'. That's where the developer opens a connection to the database, begins a transaction, and then has their way with the database. It's a common strategy but very inflexible. I believe small transactions kept at the stored proc level works better. Then if needed you can nest them in larger transactions at the "business logic" layer.

Zire72

I just got a Zire72 and am pretty happy with it. The camera's quality is "OK" but everything else works pretty well. It comes with RealAudio media player which doesn't support WMA but pocketTunes does. I have the trial and am happy with it (thanks for the heads up Paul). I've always been a fan of the PalmOS for its simplicity. Right now Palm is offereing some cool rebates with the purchase:

- Free Palm Hard Case with purchase of Zire 72 handheld or Zire 72 GPS Kit.
- Free space. 512MB, to be exact! Get a FREE 512MB memory card by mail when you buy a Zire 72 handheld. $79 Value
- Trade In / Trade Up - Give us your old handheld or communicator - We'll send you a $50 Gift Certificate!


Anybody still writing PalmOS apps out there? What's popular for palm dev these days?

ASP,NET Development with Dreamweaver

I've been working on a small ASP.NET project. With this particular project I've chosen to put all the code within <script> blocks. For a change this time around I'm using Dreamweaver MX as the IDE. I've typically used VisualStudio.NET or Crimson Editor in the past but DMX has killer code editor features for ASP.NET editing:

- Works with ASP.NET DataSet, DataGrid and DataList objects
- ASP.NET Webforms support
- ASP.NET Custom Tag Support
- Dynamic Form Objects
- Server Objects
- Tag Editors for ASP.NET