In response to Mike's post... I know exactly where you're coming from and you are right a web based solution is the simplest and would be the fastest to develop and rollout etc. but..
The cost is in the data, in the uk you get charged for the amount of data you send/receive by GPRS and this data you are paying for would ideally be useful data and not the HTML to present it. Engineers generally get the job information then fill in bits as they go along, and also reveiew what has been done on the job at various times throughout their work, this could mean alot of traffic moving through data screens in a web based application. The push capability of a full client could also be very useful. The pocket PC hardware is very cheap, and this platform would provide a good user experience with regards to screen size and means of inputting the data. In response to Ernst... There hasn't been a full decision by management to spend lots of cash on this as yet hence why I am making this sort of a pet project for my self and spending mostly my own time, we will then hopefully trial it with a few engineers and then see where it goes, you are right though, the company ideally should invest in a full solution as in my opinion there could be massive savings to the company both in money and time and also improved service to customers, problem is management can take a lot of convincing and they don't like spending money. It would give me great satisfaction though to roll my own solution to this and then at least prove the benefits to the company, even if just to convince them to purchase a system from a vendor, and even if that happens i will have learnt a lot in the process. Thanks for your replies, they are much appreciated. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
