Palm Programming: The Developer's Guide

Conduit Development

If you are creating a conduit for your Palm application, you need to do so on Macintosh or Windows using Palm’s Conduit SDK. The Conduit SDK comes with:

• Header files

• Debug and nondebug libraries

• Source code for sample conduits

What Is a Conduit?

Under Windows, a conduit is a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) that is called as HotSync occurs. An install DLL is provided with which you register your conduit with HotSync. On Mac OS, a conduit is a shared library.

Conduits have access to databases on the Palm OS. The Conduit Manager handles the complexities of communication; it is not your concern. You simply call routines to read and write records in the database. The Conduit Manager handles the communication protocol.

Using C/C++

In order to develop conduits for Windows, you must use Visual C++ 5.0 (or later). For Mac OS, you can use any development environment that has the ability to create shared libraries (CodeWarrior for Mac OS is a likely candidate).

C++ classes that simplify creating a synchronization conduit are provided by Palm (frequently referred to by the names basemon and basetbl ). These C++ classes are the basis of the conduits for the built-in applications. If your application’s synchronization needs are similar to those of the built-in applications, then these C++ classes work well. As your application’s sync needs differ, the C++ classes become less useful, and you might wish to consider reverting to the underlying C/C++ Conduit Manager API to make things ...