iPad Development Question

[waynefulcher]

I have been programming now for about 22 years but I must say I have always developed Windows based applications. I now have a desire and a need as well to do some development for an iPad. Or at least I think I do. Heck I dont yet even own an iPad but I used them before from others I know who have them. I really have two questions here.

1. Is this the forum I would use for questions about development. (Language, IDE, etc...). And if not could someone point me to a good forum that is used for development purposes.

2. This is really my first development question, but I was wondering with an iPad would I be able to talk over any wireless network and do basic real world things like read data from a SQL database or save data to a file on some network resource, send documents to a printer, etc...?

 

[MachThree]

I have been programming now for about 22 years but I must say I have always developed Windows based applications. I now have a desire and a need as well to do some development for an iPad. Or at least I think I do. Heck I dont yet even own an iPad but I used them before from others I know who have them. I really have two questions here.

1. Is this the forum I would use for questions about development. (Language, IDE, etc...). And if not could someone point me to a good forum that is used for development purposes.

2. This is really my first development question, but I was wondering with an iPad would I be able to talk over any wireless network and do basic real world things like read data from a SQL database or save data to a file on some network resource, send documents to a printer, etc...?

You'd probably do best to go straight to the source - this is Apple's home page for iOS development:

iOS Dev Center - Apple Developer

From what I can gather (I haven't done development on the iPad myself, I am just extrapolating from what I've seen real world apps do), you can send pretty much anything over TCP/IP that you want. As to whether or not there are specific libraries in Apple's SDK to help you do that, or if you have to deal with protocols like ODBC or what not on a lower level yourself, I cannot say. But for common and more genericstuff, i.e. consuming a web service, I would imagine that their SDK must have something in it to help with that.

As for printing, the iPad has built in support for "Air Print", which is an Apple standard for printing directly to a printer over wireless connection. Most printers don't support this, but there are workarounds so people can emulate this functionality via a PC/MAC working with an attached printer. Clearly Apple's SDK will provide ways for you to send stuff to a printer over Air Print. Beyond that, again you'd probably be on your own, dealing with low level protocols and messages that would normally be handled by a printer driver.

 

[iPadCharlie]

1. Is this the forum I would use for questions about development. (Language, IDE, etc...). And if not could someone point me to a good forum that is used for development purposes.

Believe it or not, there is a section of the forum called... iPad Development - Apple iPad Forum

 

[earlyadopter]

Here is another post about developing apps...

http://www.ipadforums.net/ipad-diy/12724-creating-your-own-apps.html