Links to Wireless PDA data collection solutions?

[lemansnsx]

Anyone have any good links or references for data collection through PDAs with cellular or other internet access? A friend's company is looking into some sort of solution for about 60 locations across the country which typically do not have landline or cable internet access. They need to be able to fill in forms on a web server maybe or at least e-mail forms back to HQ at the end of each day. Thanks in advance for any leads - he needs to get up to speed on this fairly quickly.

 

[O-Ace]

I haven't looked into out-of-the-box solutions for data collection, but from what I know about wireless web technology, this should be a fairly simple task. Is he willing to hire a consulting company to do it for him?

-Awais

 

[lemansnsx]

Is he willing to hire a consulting company to do it for him?

-Awais

No, I don't think that the company can afford to get into hiring a consultant to hold their hands through this one. I think he needs to do all of the research and then probably have one or two vendors come in and put on the dog and pony show for them.

 

[NemesisX]

As far as a PDA, I use the Treo 270 cellphone with internet. Anywhere I can get a phone signal I can get the internet which is VERY important if I am travelling ( I need to watch the markets). I also have it set up so I can plug it into my laptop and also get internet connectivity to my laptop. I love the setup!

Not sure if that answered your question or not, but hope it helped.

 

[Ojas]

Before you dive into looking at specific solutions, there are a few things to consider about the approach that would be used.

Since most PDAs have built-in web-browsers, a thin-client solution might be a good idea, as Awais suggested. You would need to build a web site and database. Just open a browser on the PDA and open the site. The office would access a seperate part of the web application to view the submitted data. The nice thing about this solution is that it is more-or-less platform independant and will work on any PDA with a browser. Because of this there will never be a need to install new software on the PDAs if new or different pieces of information need to be captured.

Almost any web scripting language, webserver, and database could be used. A very simple solution would be to not even run a database, but collect data using a form-mail web page which would submit data to an email address at the main office.

If an offline solution is desired (collecting the data of the course of a day, then submitting everything as a batch at the end of the day), it would be a little more complicated (in terms of development and maintenance) but you would have the added flexibility of being able to collect data when there is no Internet connection available. In this case, you would want to have an application running on the PDA to collect and store the data, then submit it over the web to a web server which would collect data from all the terminals and store in a central database. This solution gets a little more complicated because the application would be specific to the type of PDA (Palm, PocketPC, etc.) and because the software on each PDA would need installed and upgraded (if needed) individually.

In either case, you would have to determine what kind of security is needed and incorporate this into the application.

BTW: I'm not aware of any out-of-the-box solutions, but, depending on the requirements it may not cost much to develop a custom solution.

 

[lemansnsx]

Since most PDAs have built-in web-browsers, a thin-client solution might be a good idea. You would need to build a web site and database. Just open a browser on the PDA and open the site. The office would access a seperate part of the web application to view the submitted data. The nice thing about this solution is that it will work on any PDA with a browser and there will never be a need to install new software on the PDAs if new or different pieces of information need to be captured.

Almost any web scripting language, webserver, and database could be used. A very simple solution would be to not even run a database, but collect data using a form-mail web page which would submit data to an email address at the main office.

If an offline solution is desired (collecting the data of the course of a day, then submitting everything as a batch at the end of the day), it would be a little more complicated (in terms of development and maintenance) but you would have the added flexibility of being able to collect data when there is no Internet connection. In this case, you would want to have an application running on the PDA to collect and store the data, then submit it over the web to a web server which would collect data from all the terminals and store in a central database.

In either case, you would have to determine what kind of security is needed and implement an appropriate solution.

Thanks, your thinking pretty much parallels mine. I've done a little work in this field before - never actually implemented anything but we were "brought up to speed" for a couple of possible engagements when I did some consulting on a 150,000 user network. One of the things we looked at was the technology that makes web content adapt to the device being used to view it. IOW - if the connection comes from a PDA you get one version of the page but if it comes from a cellphone you get something else and so on. We also did some looking at single-sign-on, Citrix, and webifying legacy apps.
From what little he has told me I think that they can get by initially with cgi forms and the form results being submitted via e-mail to the appropriate person then later they will graduate to sql on a server.
I'm thinking that this is probably pretty simple as long as nobody tries to re-invent the wheel in the process.
Security (luckily) isn't really an issue - they do not collect any sensitive information but if need be we can always make it a vpn setup with a soft token or similar.

 

[O-Ace]

A web-based solution with SQL Server integration would take no more than 1-2 days of a developer's time.

-Awais