>James, thank you for your input. A big question is my mind (or something that I can't wrap around my mind) is how do I do my data access and data update. Currently my ASP.NET uses C# to get the data from database and then update the data back to the database. If I use this (or any other) framework, I am wondering, how easy (or possible at all) will be incorporate my C# code to get/set the data. I don't expect that you (or anybody) can give me an easy answer to this question.


What James is talking about is just a Web application which means you do everything (in your case) with ASP.NET. It's no different than a standard Web application. You still use C# to access the data and feed that data into Web pages.

The other option is to go device native (ie. iPad application) in which case your application is built with a native tablet OS language (objective C, or Java for Android, or Silverlight for MS Phones/tablets most likely) and you connect to a Web service to handle the 'real' data access. You can have local data, but most business data likely will come from the cloud via services. This is how most apps for phone and tablet work today.

Personally I think the second, native model will go away in the not too distant future. THe problem is that it's unsustainable as more different portable platforms come to market. Currently we have two maybe three major phone/table technologies: iOS, Android and Windows (which is by far the weakest) and already developers are starting to pick only the primary platoform (iOS) and ignoring others. However there are lots of people with phones/tablets on other platforms and this disconnect is eventually going to cause either some cross platform consolidation, or more likely a kick back to an HTML5/JS based model that works more portably across platforms.

I think, especially for cloud centric applications that get most of their data over the Web anyway, using a Web based approach makes a lot of sense because it allows you to build one app that works across platforms from desktop to phone/tablet, on the road etc. It might not offer the slickest UI experience on custom devices like iPad/iPhone, but most people developing business apps wouldn't manage that well even in native apps since it takes a bit of work to create polished apps.

Personally I think things will definitely change a lot in the coming years - this stuff has to get easier and more homogenized to reach the masses in the future.

+++ Rick ---

>
>
>>PMFJI, I have been working on an app for mobile phones and tablets for a while. I have been using jquery mobile for the general framework. It uses html5 and CSS3 but mostly CSS3 and Java script. The framework loads the initial page and then all communication to the server uses Ajax unless you specify otherwise. A web app really looks and feels like an app. Also, there is an application called phonegap that can be used a a wrapper for a web app that makes it an app that can be downloaded from web stores. You can do most of your development testing using Chrome or Firefox (not IE) but it is important that testing is done on as many devices as possible. I have tested my current app with Iphone, Ipad, Android 2.1 or higher and then I tried an Eee Pad from Asus running Androd 3.2 and I have some very interesting problems. Emulators help but they are not the same as the devices. You see what it looks like at rcsfind.com. The app uses GPS to find properties so you will only be able to use the "Search by Area" button.
>>
>>>Hi Hank,
>>>
>>>Thank you very much for a detailed input. Some of terms you mentioned are new to me; so I will have to Google/read/etc. to learn. But if I might ask you one more question, please. Must I have an iPad to create a test (something of a Hello World) application or I can simulate it on a PC?
>>>
>>>>Hi Dmitry,
>>>>
>>>>folks often talk about HTML5 as though it were a complete widget set. It is not. A complete widget set involves some aspects of HTML5 at times, but is more about CSS3 and Javascript than anything else. Check out Cappuccino, Google Web Toolkit, and ActiveWidgets for 3 examples. In each case you will see that there are complex objects, being rendered using various tricks (e.g., sticking an entire "form" as a DOM structure directly onto a parent DOM member, so that the browser's rendering engine renders everything at once -- this was introduced in GWT 2.x, and is the chief way of getting native control display speed on devices).
>>>>
>>>>IOW: Microsoft will need to supply this widgets, and they will need to be optimzed in the way that the 3 I have mentioned above (and there are many others, e.g., the Dojo Toolkit) have been optimized.
>>>>
>>>>If they tie that to XAML, with design in Blend, then they have become interesting. Support for HTML5 itself is not exciting, nor even interesting, really.
>>>>
>>>>Hank
>>>>
>>>>>PMFJI,
>>>>>
>>>>>When you are saying to go with web-based HTML 5 app, can you use ASP.NET (from VS.NET) and use HTML5 with it? Or do you mean to write "everything" in HTML 5? The reason I am asking is I have an ASP.NET application that works well. But I would like it to be "compatible" with iPad and I guess HTML 5 is the way to go. But I am not sure where to start. Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
>>>>>
>>>>>>Then you got the wrong vibe. A customer recently asked me about creating a new app in Silverlight. My advice was to go with a web-based HTML 5 app because it will work on the iPad. Silverlight will never run there.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>My point was that in the enterprise business world, Windows is still king and I don't see that changing in the near future.
>>>>>>