[araskin]

I am doing some initial investigation into an App that I want to write. I have a few questions and I appreciate any assistance that can be provided.

1. Does anyone know of a company that will host my Blackberry Development environment? My app is going to be a Client Server app and so I need to be able to communicate with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

2. There are a few third party application development platforms which claim to speed up development. One example is FlowFinity. Does anyone have experience with these? Good or bad stories would be appreciated.

Appreciate any input.

Regards,

Alon

[corey@12mile]

FlowFinity is pretty neat software... if you are considering them, you should have enough money for your own dev environment... It's only about 10 grand per server for a FlowFinity.

cd.

[arconsulting]

>> 1. Does anyone know of a company that will host my Blackberry
>> Development environment?

Huh? I've never heard of anyone doing development on anything other than their own local box.

Regarding Flowfinity, from what I've seen, it is more of a tool to develop mobile forms. The user can fill out these forms and the data is transmitted back to the server.

[corey@12mile]

Flowfinity is more of a message queuing middleware type app. It basically handles data when the radio is off or you are out of coverage. I looked into it a while back, but the price was a bit (ok a lot) too rich for me.

[DoomBringer]

you can do development with just the simulator if you want. No need to spend all that much cash, but if you're serious, you'll want your own BES and at least two handhelds, of different types. The BlackBerry is one expensive mofo to develop for, once you get serious about it...

[corey@12mile]

Originally Posted by DoomBringer

you can do development with just the simulator if you want. No need to spend all that much cash, but if you're serious, you'll want your own BES and at least two handhelds, of different types. The BlackBerry is one expensive mofo to develop for, once you get serious about it...

I'll second that... I have in my basement a compaq dl380 with win2003 server, exchange server 2003, a compaq 1850r with win2003, bes 4.0 (200 user licenses) and a 5 user goodlink/goodaccess server. I've been lucky in that I have the Microsoft Action Pack to keep all my software legal and generous handouts from RIM/Rogers Wireless/Good to have the rest all legit. If I actually had to buy everything I run at home for development, I would have to sell my house.

I looked into flowfinity, but the price is rediculous, they don't offer any type of developer pricing, or at least didn't when I was looking into it a year or so ago.

For those of you who are interested, pretty much anyone can become a microsoft partner these days, which entitles you to get the action pack from microsoft which basically gives you in-house licenses for everything they make... Windows Server OS's, Server Apps (Exchange/SQL/CRM/etc), XP Pro (10 I think), Office 2003, Visual Studio, etc... All for like $400 a year, and you get quarterly updated CD's as well...

Here's a link to the Action Pack website...

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40009735

If you want to develop, and want to keep things legal, here's a great way to do it... Single user BES licenses can be had as well for not as much as the Enterprise or Small Business servers cost. Or you can get a 60 day trial for cheap from RIM.

cd.