[Smido]

Hello !

I am planing to build an application (BB and Domino) which has a huge amount of data ( > 9000 records ) on the server.
To avoid problems with memory, traffic, performance and handling of huge data on a mobile device I would like to know your opinion what might the best way to implement the solution.

As far as I know it could be one of the following ways:

A) Push all data to the device
Contra: This might be lead to problems with memory, traffic, performance and handling
Pro: This gives the user the ability to work off-line

development starting point:
ECL Sample

B) Push a subset of data to the device and give the ability to load data on request (and optional store requested data permanent)
Contra: User can not work off-line
Pro: No hassle with huge data amount

development starting point:

????

technology:
MDS Studio - Webservices
BB Java VM
BB Browser
???

C) Search records online - Browser based
Contra: User can not work off-line
Pro: No hassle with huge data amount
Contra: Lower user experience
Pro: Less client programming needed

development starting point:

????

Do you know about other ways to get a solution or have comments to my thoughts ?

Any hint will be appreciated.


Smido

[adperdue]

Wirelessly posted (BB 7100g: BlackBerry7100/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

The three questions you need to ask yourself, as the developer of the program, 1. How often are the users likly to be offline? 2. How much data is absolutly needed? 3. Can I compress data or limit file sizes? It might not solve all your problems, but it might help too.

[adperdue]

Wirelessly posted (BB 7100g: BlackBerry7100/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

The three questions you need to ask yourself, as the developer of the program, 1. How often are the users likly to be offline? 2. How much data is absolutly needed? 3. Can I compress data or limit file sizes? It might not solve all your problems, but it might help too.

[simon.hain]

in my experience a mixed strategy works best.
using webservices creates too much overhead if you ask me, better to go with a server/client strategy.
to improve offline capabilities you can cache data, you have to be aware that this makes your application a lot clumsier and needs much more development. ask yourself if you really need this.

[jfisher]

web services have minimal overhead for the benefits you achive. we use web services throughout our products on bb and have no problems at all.

we also added offline functionality in our early modules but soon found that this was never used by users, the devices are rarely without signal. we save some data locally that is accessed a lot or is unchanging so in this respect, i agree, a mixed strategy is the way to go.