Rob Tiffany's Windows Mobile Accelerator : Wireless

New Blog Site @ http://robtiffany.com

robtiffany — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:58:00 GMT

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that I'm continuing this blog over at robtiffany.com. I've finally decided to make better use of my personal Domain name and I'm switching to WordPress from the blog management system we use at MSDN. As a Mobility Architect at Microsoft, I will continue to give you my insights into the exciting world of Windows phones, wireless technologies, mobile hardware, the mobile web and Microsoft's mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP). Don't worry, you'll be getting my take on competing technologies as well. I enjoy seeing many of you both at Microsoft and at the events that I speak at all around the world. Now you have another place to hear from me. Come visit and subscribe to my RSS feed over at robtiffany.com. Happy Holidays everyone!

Best Regards,

Rob

Rise of the Psuedo Smartphones

robtiffany — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:50:00 GMT

What do the following feature phones have in common?

LG Dare
LG Voyager
LG Versa
LG enV Touch
LG Rumour 2
LG Lotus
LG Neon
LG Xenon
LG VU
Samsung Alias 2
Samsung Gravity
Samsung Behold
Samsung Highlight
Samsung Memoir
Samsung Propel
Samsung Rant
Samsung Exclaim
Samsung Instinct
Samsung Magnet
Samsung Eternity
Samsung Impression
Sanyo SCP-2700
AT&T Quickfire
Pantech Matrix
Motorola Karma

They include features like:

High-Megapixel Cameras w/Zoom
GPS
Touch Screen
QWERTY Keyboards
Play Music
Play Videos
Web Browser
Email
Games
Apps
Instant Messaging
3G
Stereo Bluetooth
Video Capture
SD Card Storage
Calendar
Contacts
Quad-Band GSM
Voice Dialing
Alarm
Calculator
Photo Album
SMS
MMS
Wi-Fi
Internet Tethering
Slide-out Keyboard
Turn-by-Turn Navigation
Push to Talk
Radio
Hi-res Graphics
Streaming XM/Sirius
Mobile TV
Java
Facebook
MySpace

We consider phones with advanced mobile operating systems like Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian, and WebOS to be Smartphones. When I look at the list of features above, I think most people in world would have a hard time distinguishing between what we call Smartphones and the rising tide of super-charged feature phones. At a 30,000 ft level, a published API and development tools that allow you to create rich applications to access databases and remote servers may be the only distinction. Of course that would be a slight againt Java ME that's found on over a billion feature phones. I would venture to guess that 99% of the buying public can't tell the difference and may not even care as long as the price is right.

The big takeaway is that the large chasm that used to exist between feature phones and Smartphones has diminished dramatically. In the coming years, Smartphone OS and hardware manufacturers have no choice but to innovate in a big way in order to put some distance between themselves and the clones attacking them from below or risk becoming commoditized and irrelevant.

- Rob

Mobile Architecture Pocket Guide v1.1

robtiffany — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:01:00 GMT

Just wanted to let everyone know that version 1.1 of the Mobile Architecture Pocket Guide is now available on CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/AppArch/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=19798. This is the first patterns & practices update to this guide since 2002 so it's a welcome sight to to have it out there for all our Windows Mobile developers.

I've spent the last couple of months working with J.D. Meier, Rabi Satter, Rob Boucher and the rest of the P&P team to tune, tweak and update the new Mobile Architecture Pocket Guide to ensure that it's as accurate and relevant to today's Windows Mobile platform and runtimes as possible. The guide's chapters include:

Ch 01 > Mobile Application Architecture
Ch 02 > Architecture and Design Guidelines
Ch 03 > Presentation Layer Guidelines
Ch 04 > Business Layer Guidelines
Ch 05 > Data Access Layer Guidelines
Ch 06 > Service Layer Guidelines
Ch 07 > Communication Guidelines
Ch 08 > Deployment Patterns

Our goal is to empower our Windows Mobile developer community as much as possible, and while this guide may seem like it's targeted exclusively to developers, I ensured that the IT Pro side of the house is accommodated as well. Mobile infrastructure elements of this guide include System Center Mobile Device Manager (Deployment), SQL Server (Sync Services + Merge), IIS (Web Services + Sync + WCF), Exchange (WCF Store and Forward) and Active Directory (Auth).

Download it, take if for a spin, and give us your feedback so we can keep improving it.

- Rob

See you in Barcelona for Tech Ed EMEA Dev

robtiffany — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:14:00 GMT

Looking forward to seeing lots of familiar faces and meeting new ones starting December 10th at Tech Ed EMEA! While I ran the Windows Mobile track for Tech Ed North America last June in Orlando, this time around I'll just be delivering a couple of presentations and spending most of my time helping empower delegates to create incredible mobile applications. I'll be delivering the following breakout sessions:


	MBL301	What's New in the Windows Mobile Line of Business Solution Accelerator 2008	November 10 16:00 - 17:15	Room 121
This session walks through the new features that we have added to the Windows Mobile Line of Business Accelerator 2008; features such as adapting your application to any device or screen size with a single binary, sync services, store and forward, and advanced data access objects with Microsoft .NET CF 3.5.


	MBL310	Mobilize your Enterprise and Achieve Global Scalability with Windows Mobile and SQL Server Compact	November 11 15:15 - 16:30	Room 121
With the world's largest organizations rolling out tens of thousands of Windows Mobile devices to empower their respective workforces, the ability to create mobile line-of-business solutions that can support large user populations is critical. Based on his third book on Windows Mobile development, Rob Tiffany shows you how to take the Microsoft SQL Server data you use to run your organization and make it available to all your mobile employees. Utilizing the performance, scale-out, and filtering capabilities of Merge Replication Republishing, Rob shows you how to build an n-tier mobile synchronization architecture designed to scale to hundreds of thousands of devices. Take the guesswork out of mobilizing your enterprise by tapping into the experience of one of the world's foremost authorities on Windows Mobile infrastructure and development.

See you there!

- Rob

Chapter 1 of my new Book is Ready!

robtiffany — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:12:00 GMT

Mobile Data Synchronization with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server Compact > Second Edition

Achieving Global Scalability via Merge Replication Republishing

Download and review the PDF from my Windows Live SkyDrive @

http://cid-8b9c82da88af61fc.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Sync/Ch%201.pdf

The new book shows you how to scale out your Merge Replication Architecture with Republishing. It's chock full of new insight to show you how to get the most performance and scalability out of your system. It also shows you how to make replication Subscriptions available to the Internet via ISA Server 2006 or System Center Mobile Device Manager.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Best Regards,

Rob

Listen to Rob's Windows Mobile Interview on .NET Rocks!

robtiffany — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:07:00 GMT

I was recently interviewed by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell who run one of the Internet's most popular developer sites, .NET Rocks! You can catch the interview at http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=384 where you can either listen to it live via the website, or download it to your favorite device to listen later.

I cover the current state of Windows Mobile + the entire ecosystem including OEMs, Mobile Operators, developers and who does what within Microsoft's Mobile Commications Business in Redmond and the Mobile Development Center in Hyderabad. I take Carl and Richard on a deep dive of our latest mobile development technologies and techniques with the .NET Compact Framework, SQL Server Compact, and WCF Store and Forward just to name a few. I also cover all the features of System Center Mobile Device Manager including OTA software distribution, Group Policies, Mobile VPN security and Domain join.

Download it and give it a listen

- Rob

Building Offline Enabled Applications

robtiffany — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 05:29:00 GMT

At Tech Ed Developers in Orlando this year, I had the pleasure of joining Ginny Caughey, Steve Lasker, Liam Cavanagh, and Rob Relyea for a Tech Ed Online discussion on building offline enabled applications.

In an online world, why are we building offline apps? Because networks are only occasionally available, or occasionally not available. However, building offline apps is a bit more complicated. Listen to our panel of speakers that works on enabling offline apps from the storage, sync, programming model, and UI stack.

View the low bandwidth version:

http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/TechEdOnline/Videos/08_NA_Dev_TEOPanel_14_low.wmv

View the high bandwidth version:

http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/TechEdOnline/Videos/08_NA_Dev_TEOPanel_14_high.wmv

View the MP4 version:

http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/TechEdOnline/Videos/08_NA_Dev_TEOPanel_14_high.mp4

- Rob

The iPhone comes to the Enterprise with a little help from Microsoft

robtiffany — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:07:00 GMT

This morning, Steve Jobs announced that Apple has licensed the Exchange Active Sync protocol from Microsoft in order to bring the following functionality to the iPhone:

Push Email
Push Contacts
Push Calendar
Access to the Global Address List (GAL)
Remote Wipe
Password Policies

The Apple folks publicly bashed the way Blackberry does email through a NOC and praised Microsoft for coming up with a much more advanced architecture that allows the iPhone to work directly with Exchange in a more reliable and affordable way. Before all you fans of Windows Mobile freak out, just remember, licensing our AirSync protocol to Apple means increased sales of Exchange Server, Windows Server, ISA Server and lots of CALs.

Now on a much more threatening note, Apple did launch their new iPhone SDK that allows developers to build on-device applications using Objective C. If you've ever done development on a NeXT Workstation or Mac OSX, you'll know what Object C is. This SDK allows you to build rich applications for the iPhone that utilize the following features:

SQLite for Database access
Core Location for location-based services
Core Audio
Video via h.264
Core animation
OpenGL ES for hardware accelerated 3D graphics and games
Cocoa Touch for multi touch input
Accelerometer to use the iPhone's 3-axis sensor in apps

They've got Xcode development tools, a debugger, an emulator, and a graphical forms builder with drag and drop functionality.

Like the Amazon Kindle, they've created something called "App Store" that will be included on the iPhone so users can find, buy and wirelessly download applications to their device. You'll even be notified when there's an update to downloaded software. All downloadable applications will have electronic certificates from Apple.

If that's not enough, famous Venture Capitalist John Doerr announced that Kleiner Perkins (KPCB) started a $100 Million iFund to back companies looking to develop innovative applications for the iPhone.

By any objective measure, this is a big day for the iPhone. What can we do to ensure that Microsoft is a winner in this equation? Just like with the benefits we receive by allowing the iPhone to sync with Exchange Server, the development of iPhone apps that connect with Microsoft servers will be just what the doctor ordered. I would get started with the following:

SQL Server Compact for iPhone
Sync Services for ADO.NET with a provider for the iPhone SSC database so we can sync with SQL Server
SharePoint Server 2007 access
Communicator Mobile to access Office Communications Server 2007

You get the gist of where I'm going. Just remember, the competition never sleeps and you should always expect to have your feet kept to the fire. We must constantly reinvent ourselves and be ready to eat our own lunch before our competitors do.

- Rob

Welcome to the New Windows Mobile Developer Center

robtiffany — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 10:21:00 GMT

A quick glance at the Windows Mobile Developer Center clues you in to the fact that we’ve done a complete overhaul of the site. For years, our “bread and butter” has been delivering you content on Smart Device Development which most often included articles on building apps with the .NET Compact Framework and SQL Server CE/Mobile/Everywhere/Compact. While we will still do that, we’re now making a concerted effort to expand the diversity of our content to cover an ever-growing mobile developer audience.

The biggest thing you notice when you come to the site is 4 big boxes. Think of these as 4 concurrently running worker threads delivering more content on more topics than ever before.

1. From the “Applications for Smart Devices” box, you’ll see content that targets native, managed, and SQL Server Compact topics. Don’t worry. It won’t be 100% enterprise development 24/7 anymore. We’ll tackle more and more consumer scenarios like Peter Foot did recently with his article on Mobile Facebook. We’ll also go the other direction too and provide content on working with low-level APIs with C++. And yes, we’ll even start talking about creating better device drivers.

2. The “Mobile Web” box will unleash wave after wave of new content that covers the explosion that some are calling “Mobile 2.0.” You’ll learn the nuts and bolts of building web sites designed for mobile devices as we talk about things like the new .MOBI standards, W3C Mobile Web best practices and the XHTML Mobile Profile. Don’t forget AJAX on Internet Explorer Mobile. Jim Wilson and Mel Sampat have blown everyone away with their coverage of AJAX on our favorite mobile platform.

3. In the “Mobile Games” box we’ll resurrect a topic that we used to give a lot of coverage to several years ago. Based on the way this segment of the market is taking off, teaching you how to build games for Windows Mobile devices could turn out to be just as important as the work we’ve done in teaching you how to build mobile apps for the enterprise. We do in fact have a portable gaming runtime for all our devices called Direct3D Mobile that can be programmed via another portable runtime called the .NET Compact Framework. We also have Direct Draw or you could just chill out and create a casual 2D game with simple Sprites using NETCF and maybe a little GDI+.

4. The “Rich Internet Applications” box is a bit of a mystery and looks to be pretty vacant place at the moment. Don’t think of it like you would an “Under Construction” web site. Think of it as the big tease that it is. Who knows for sure what’s to come in the RIA space for Windows Mobile devices?

Now that I’ve covered the 4 big boxes, take a look at the “Getting Started with Windows Mobile” section on the top-right hand side of the page. This place is a tour de force of readiness to get you going with Windows Mobile development. Labs, Webcasts, Videos, Solution Accelerators, Wiki’s, SDK’s, runtimes, and Power Toys oh my!

Stay on the right side of the page and drop one section down to give props to our Device Application Developer MVPs. We all owe so much to these great folks! They single-handedly created the Windows Mobile developer community back at the beginning of this decade by answering questions in the NETCF newsgroup, writing books, speaking at conferences (with the highest scores) and creating amazing organizations like OpenNETCF.org. They also identify a disproportionally greater number of bugs in our beta software than any other individual or group.

If you move back beneath the main boxes on the page, you’ll see a section on the left that completely displays the content of the latest Windows Mobile Team Blog. The section on the right displays the latest blog posts from Jim Wilson, Loke Uei, Me, Visual Studio for Devices, the NETCF team, the SQL Server Compact team, Steve Lasker, Jason Langridge, Mel Sampat, Constanze Roman, and Frank Prengel. The real-time information delivered by these blogs will keep you abreast of the latest developments in the Windows Mobile community.

Last but not least is a section at the bottom that lists all the Forums that help make up the Windows Mobile ecosystem. Get answers to some of your toughest questions from Microsoft employees and the community at large whether you’re building apps with C++, C#, VB, and/or SQL Server Compact.

As a Mobile Developer, Architect, Marketer, Planner and former Embedded MVP, it’s been my vision to create a one-stop resource for all my Windows Mobile needs. I believe this new Windows Mobile Developer Center is a big step in that direction. The multiple, concurrent streams of content that follows the launch of this new site will represent the proof in the pudding. It’s been my great pleasure to deliver fresh content on a monthly basis to the Windows Mobile developer community. As always, I look forward to your feedback so that I can better equip you with the information you need to get your job done.

Best Regards,

Rob Tiffany

My New Book is Now Available!

robtiffany — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:12:00 GMT

"Windows Mobile Data Synchronization with SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server Compact 3.1" is now available in print! Those of you in the continental U.S. can just buy it directly from the Hood Canal Press site at http://www.hoodcanalpress.com/catalog.htm and get free ground shipping. It's on Amazon in the U.S. so you can order it at http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Mobile-Synchronization-Server-Compact/dp/0979891205/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199744085&sr=1-13 as well. At Amazon UK you can find it here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Windows-Mobile-Synchronization-Server-Compact/dp/0979891205/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199744162&sr=1-7.

Go buy it and start building large-scale line of business and consumer applications for Windows Mobile!

-Rob

What can we learn from the new Amazon Kindle?

robtiffany — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:18:00 GMT

As an author and admirer of iconic mobile devices, I’m totally jazzed by Amazon’s new Kindle device. For those of you who haven’t read about this, Amazon just launched its own mobile reading device today that uses a high-resolution, electronic paper display to read books, newspapers, blogs and magazines on-the-go. Obviously, we’re not strangers to the ebook business since we equipped our earliest Pocket PCs with Microsoft Reader and ClearType technology. Unfortunately, the ebook marketplace just never took off. How is Kindle different and why might it succeed where so many others have failed?

Electronic Ink

The Kindle’s new electronic paper and ink technology looks just like you’re reading real paper and ink and doesn’t require a backlight. You can even read books on this device in direct sunlight which doesn’t work very well with computer screens (with the exception of the OLPC XO laptop). Not requiring a backlight means that this device and last for a week without a recharge.

Wireless Everywhere

The Kindle comes equipped with built-in EV-DO wireless so you can download a book, newspaper or magazine in less than a minute no matter where you are. You don’t have to hunt down a Wi-Fi hotspot. What’s more, there’s no monthly subscription, service plans, commitments or bills to deal with for this wireless data access.

No PC Required

Since the Kindle is a wireless device, it doesn’t require a computer and you don’t have to hassle with cables or synching. You don’t have to download content to your computer and then copy it over to your device.

Bookstore Included

The Kindle includes a built-in store that allows you to purchase content OTA from Amazon directly from your device. Books cost just $9.99 and you can sample the first chapter for free.

Content Push

Your magazine, blog and newspaper subscriptions are pushed to you. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll find that your New York Times, Wall Street Journal or other morning papers have been pushed to you overnight and are waiting for you. Magazines arrive on Kindle before they show up at the newsstand.

Check out the details and launch videos at the link below:

http://amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73MA/ref=amb_link_5873612_3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=049SQ69H0WEFBSX1P9N1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=329252801&pf_rd_i=507846

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Rob

New Mobile Merge Replication Benchmarks

robtiffany — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:02:00 GMT

I just finished up a week of teaching attendees at the Dev Connections conference how to setup and use mobile merge replication to sync data between their Windows Mobile devices and SQL Server 2005. As usual, I brought along my favorite teaching tool, my portable data center, to take attendees on deep dives of the 4 different tiers of my replication architecture. This time around, I changed the way my stress test harness works. In the past, my goal has always been to see how many Subscribers I could connect to the system at the same time. With the new test, I'm stressing the system to a much greater degree with my software to push the envelope in regards to how many table row changes I can make per hour.

With an eye towards the stress testing system that has helped give iAnywhere's ASA database and MobiLink replication server a dominant market position, I built a similar test where the amount of data in each row changed is exactly 116 bytes each time. I think the iAnywhere stress test used 92 byte rows. I used 3 servers to create client load, 3 load-balanced IIS servers, and a separate SQL Server Distributor and Publisher. The results I got from my test harness performing 23,330 syncs per hour are nothing short of spectacular:

Rows changed: 7,000,000 per hour | 168,000,000 per day
Data replicated: 812 MB per hour | 19.4 GB per day

Now check out how the IIS and SQL Servers where just chilling out throughout this test:

IIS1: CPU: 5% | Mem: 216 MB | Network Utilization: .44%
IIS2: CPU: 7% | Mem: 147 MB | Network Utilization: .13%
IIS3: CPU: 8% | Mem: 170 MB | Network Utilization: .42%
SQL Distributor: CPU: 5% | Mem: 2.15 GB | Network Utilization: .58%
SQL Publisher: CPU: 17% | Mem: 4.25 GB | Network Utilization: 1%

Not bad! Thanks to Loke Uei, we were also able to give away 300 copies of my new book that walks you through the construction of this scalable mobile merge replication system. Lots of Windows Mobile developers and IT Pros are now empowered to "mobilize" their organization's data out to mobile field personnel. Just as important, they can take the proof back to their respective organizations that this technology is build to perform and scale!

I'm just getting started with this new test harness. Come to the Windows Mobile Partner Summit in December to see me push this system even further and break new replication records!

- Rob

Mobile 2.0

robtiffany — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:43:00 GMT

The second annual Mobile 2.0 just wrapped up. The key takeaways are:

Mobile Web (iPhone Safari Webkit sets the standard)
Mobile Advertising (4 out of 10 Japanese click on mobile ads)
SMS (Dominant and growing messaging technology but still underutilized by mobile apps)
iPhone (Shape of things to come and raises the bar for all other handsets)
Mobile Social Networks (Perfect for personal nature of phones)
U.S. is out of touch on mobile data due to cheap flat rate pricing
Speech/Audio (unexploited technology)
Flat data roaming prices needed

The words "Microsoft" and "Windows Mobile" were never uttered at this conference which I find strange based on the tens of millions of devices we have in the marketplace. If I based my view of the mobile landscape on this conference, I would believe that people only carried iPhones and Nokia Nseries devices. One of the speaker panels pushed the notion that truly rich and innovative apps can't be acheived until mobile Linux with open APIs takes hold of the mobile OS marketplace (I guess the Yahoo! guy on the panel hasn't seen his own company's Yahoo! Go application for Windows Mobile yet). While we wait for that to happen, speakers at the conference conveyed that the primary form of mobile app development was web-based (I guess the offline strategy was just a fad). Questions about mobility in the enterprise went largely unanswered. For the most part, the only kind of mobile apps people talked about were for social networking. I wonder how many social networking apps we need?

I often felt like I was in an alternate mobile universe. I came down to San Francisco to avail myself of differing mobile viewpoints than I might have by working for the Windows Mobile product group. I've learned a few things and plan to reach out to this mobile community to better educate them about what Windows Mobile brings to the table.

Rob.

Book Review: Microsoft Mobile Development Handbook

robtiffany — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 01:40:00 GMT

Best Windows Mobile Development Book Ever Written!

Trust me, I've read them all going back to 2001 and I've written two of them myself. This is as broad and deep as it gets when it comes to managed code development on Windows Mobile. This should come as no surprise as it was written by the Windows Mobile MVP "Dream Team" of Andy Wigley, Peter Foot and Daniel "The Moth" Moth (now at Microsoft). Not only is this one of the first books to cover the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition, it even gives the reader coverage of Visual Studio 2008, and .NET Compact Framework 3.5 technologies such as WCF, LINQ, Compression, and "on-device" Unit Tests.

This book provides superb coverage of Security Programming where it shows the reader how to encrypt data with AES and RSA plus the signing of exe's and dll's. If you're interesting developing games or UI's that can't be created with the controls found in the Visual Studio Toolbox, the two chapters on Graphics and Direct3D Mobile are unparalleled. As someone who has a personal interest in the sucess of games on Windows Mobile using the .NET Compact Framework as a consistent game development runtime, this book serves as the launch pad for such endeavors. Whether you're an ISV looking to build the next killer app, a corporate developer tasked with mobilizing your line of business applications, a consultant that needs to aquire mobile development skills, or a game development house looking to take advantage of the explosive growth of the Windows Mobile platform, I highly recommend you get this book!

-Rob

The new book is underway...

robtiffany — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:26:00 GMT

As some of you know, I've been building and piecing together the documentation necessary to build out a scalable merge replication architecture for your Windows Mobile devices. If you've been to MEDC 2007 in Las Vegas or Tech Ed 2007 in Orlando, you may have stopped at my booth where I demonstrated a 4-Tier merge replication architecture with 800 subscribers synchronizing simultaneously. You might also have worked through my hands-on lab to see how to construct much of this architecture in a Virtual PC.

Now that I'm taking some time off at the beach this summer, I'm putting together all the best practices, how-to's, and step-by-step instructions so you can build a highly performant and scalable data synchronization architecture for your organization. This will be my 3rd book covering the constantly evolving Windows Mobile platform. This one will be different in that it won't be as developer-focused as the previous two and will instead empower the IT Professional.

The title will be:

"Windows Mobile Data Synchronization with SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server Compact 3.1"

The tentative chapter list is as follows:

Introduction
Domain Security
Configure the Distributor
Configure the Publisher
Configure Web Synchronization
Build the Client
Ongoing Maintenance

I expect the first draft to be completed by the end of July.

Rob