HanDBase is a relational database originally designed to run on Palm PDAs. Today versions run on most major handheld platforms and on Windows. While it is not as “full featured” as the big-system databases such as Oracle, Sybase, and DB2, it has several advantages that are becoming increasingly important as computing moves onto handheld platforms. First, it is purposely simple enough that power users can learn to build applications on top of it, and many have. DDH Software offers quite a few of these apps as free downloads on its Web site, which gives an idea of what can be done with it. Many more, however, have been built by company employees both in and outside of IT organizations to improve internal processes, and many of them are now being used across organizations of every size. Second, because HanDBase runs on all the major handheld platforms, an application built on it will also run across all those platforms. This can be a major advantage to corporate IT, which today is often struggling to support multiple handheld platforms. Third, it delivers a high degree of security, to the extent that several large medical centers use it. And fourth, because it is at heart a database, applications built on it can run independently when network connectivity is unavailable but can also exchange data with large systems such as CRM, ERP, and longitudinal patient record software, when it is. This minimizes the intermittent connectivity problem inherent in mobile computing.
WIKIBON: We are seeing the entry of the iPhone and iPod Touch into the handheld arena with a new OS and large numbers of of applications in the new Apple App Store. What impact do you think this will have on the handheld market, particularly given the huge popularity of the iPod in the consumer market (and remembering that the iPhone/Touch was originally developed as a next generation iPod)?
HAUPERT: I think Palm and the Windows Mobile vendors just sat on their laurels for the last few years. When Apple came out with their iPod devices with 4 GB and 8 GB, my prediction at that time was that you would see everybody bringing out PDA devices with a similar amount of flash memory, more creative apps and larger databases to go with them. But they never did. We know from the price of SD cards that memory doesn't really add much to the cost.
WIKIBON: Another thing I notice is that my friends who have iPhones report that the battery life is great. By comparison, every handheld I have ever handled has had a 90 minute battery life.
HAUPERT: I have one, and I will carry it all day, do my calls on it, etc., and at the end of the day the battery is still at 90%. So yeah, much improved.
WIKIBON: The iPhone is much more graphic, it is heavily oriented toward network integration, do you see an impact from this in where people are heading in software development?
HAUPERT: I think the biggest impact is not because of the touch screen and not because of the graphic driven interface. I think it is because of the mindshare. When Palm was new, it had a mindshare in a portion of the population that saw it as “the” new gadget. For years they had this to themselves, and that was where all the focus [among developers] was, because of that. Now you hear about the iPod Touch and iPhone, and you will see the same exact kind of thing. You wind up getting some really cool innovations. Part of its appeal is that interface. You give an iPhone to little kids, and even my 3-year-old can move around on it. The interface is very intuitive. I think it has a chance of spreading to more than just power users like us.
WIKIBON: One of the big reasons people get turned off to PDAs is that it is hard to write in one. What do you think of the iPhone's virtual keyboard?
HAUPERT: I think that's where the thumbboards originally came in, because people were unwilling to learn a new method of entering text. The touch keyboard with the stylus was not a good work around, so they started adding a thumb board. With the iPhone you have the soft keyboard, so you can write with your thumbs. I find personally that when I write full speed on it, it is making errors all along, but with the auto-correction, it just kind of corrects itself 95% of the time. The problem then is mainly with proper names that aren't in the dictionary. But it actually searches your address book as part of its dictionary, so if you have the name there, it will find it. But basically it's going to be fixing your typos for you whether you like it or not, unless you tap the screen to say don't do that.
What it does is it shows you one choice, not like other correction software that shows the top three possibilities. If you type “relation” it waits for the next letter before suggesting anything. If you type an “a” it will make it “relational”, but if you type an “s” it will correct it to “relationship”. But if you type a space at that point it will take “relationship” without making you stop to tap the choice on the screen, unless you tap the screen button to say you don't want that word. So in that way it is much quicker, as long as it has identified the right word, and it makes a lot of corrections, whether you want it to or not. The good news is that it is very smart, so it is very good at identifying the right word. End result, I find I actually do type about as fast as I did on a thumb-board.
WIKIBON: The big news last spring was Nokia's announcement that it will turn Symbian over to an open source consortium. What impact do you expect this to have on the smartphone market? Symbian is a big player there, particularly in Europe and Asia-Pacific.
HAUPERT: In the US, we see a lot of Nokia devices but usually they are using the S40, which is a step below the smart phone version. But for the announcement, I think it was a surprise to everybody, and I imagine Google was very surprised.
It was a response to Android, but I think the people who will get hurt most are Microsoft. Symbian was never a free license, but it was always cheaper than Windows Mobile. It was about $4 per phone for Symbian, whereas Microsoft was in the $8-$12+ range. So if somebody is going to get hurt by the Symbian announcement, I would imagine Microsoft has the most to lose there. Microsoft isn't making devices, so it doesn't have hardware to sell like Apple or Palm.
Access in China, which now owns the Palm OS, came out with a virtual machine version of the Palm OS that runs on the Nokia N810 tablet, which is actually a Linux-based device. They showed a demo last spring. It is available for free. It has wireless hot sync and different scaling modes to fit different size screens. It is a pretty compelling demo. I imagine they could do the same thing on Symbian and would really be a smart move to keep the Palm OS alive.
WIKIBON: Where else is Palm showing up these days?
HAUPERT: Styletap tried bringing out a Palm virtual machine for the iPhone. They make a version for Windows Mobile already. One of the things about Apple development that is different is Apple is restrictive about the applications you can write and the licensing says you can't make applications that run as an emulator, so that's why I don't believe they were able to do that. So I'm sure its possible to make, and I'm sure they have it working, but for the licensing they would need some sort of special override to allow you to do that. There are actually some interesting limitations on what can be done on the iPhone platform. There was an article in engadget that said they don't allow turn-by-turn navigation, which is weird because they just came out with GPS on the new iPhone version. I think it is a liability thing; they are afraid people will have accidents and sue Apple. There have also been well publicized cases of apps that were not approved for the App Store for various unknown reasons that fuel all sorts of speculation.
WIKIBON: What do you think of Android as a technology? Given the huge jump in technology in the smartphone market in the last year, driven in part by the iPhone, does Android still offer enough to make a dent in a highly competitive market?
HAUPERT: There are some really nice looking demos. It's very slick and one of the most popular demos they have is where they actually have an accelerometer and a compass built into the reference design. So basically you hold your phone up and it figures out which direction you are facing and where you are from the GPS, and it shows you the street view picture that goes with it. And as you move the phone around you are scrolling around the Google Earth photos of where you are. So if you are looking for a certain building you hold it up and it shows you where you are and highlights the building you are looking for. It's a really cool technology there.
One thing that Google has different from everybody but RIM is their coding environment is not C-based. Typically all the existing source code for Palm, Windows Mobile, etc., is relatively easy to port among the other devices. The UI changes, but most everything else remains the same. But on Android it is Java-based. So all the programming has to be basically redone. So I don't think you will see as quick a port of existing mobile applications to Google/Android. RIM is the same way, it is also JAVA-based, which is one reason you don't see many of the handheld apps moving to it. [ed: The other of course is that until recently none of the Blackberry models had a touchscreen.] RIM has a much smaller set of applications as a result, even though Blackberries have been selling great for 10 years now. I remember being at PalmSource developer's conference, and people were using Blackberries there, which I thought was kind of ironic.
WIKIBON: Palm was really slow to get the idea of being networked. It was only when they switched from PDAs to smart phones that they really got the idea of embedding a radio in the handheld. And even then the Palm smart phones only have cellular, they don't have WIFi in them. Of course that may not be Palm's fault. The carriers regard WiFi as competition and don't allow the phone makers to include it. They really cripple the phones that way. Apple was the only manufacturer with enough clout to force the carriers to accept WiFi in the phones. Part of the reason for that was that the whole idea of the iPhone was that you could download your music and video directly from the iTunes Store. You don't want to download albums and large video files at cellular speeds. Also Apple forced AT&T to allow access to the entire Internet, not just what the carrier wanted you to use. Do you want your photos on AT&T's photo service, or do you want them on Facebook?
HAUPERT: The carriers believed that if the phone had WiFi people wouldn't get the data plan, and they would lose that revenue. But with Apple you have to get the data plan. And the WiFi helps the carrier because you aren't clogging up its lines with those long downloads. So they are getting the revenue, and the WiFi actually helps the carrier because they don't have to clog the network up with all those files. They are making money, and they aren't using the network, so it is actually a big win for the carrier.
WIKIBON: And if you don't want to buy the data plan, get the iPod Touch. So do you anticipate Android to appear on a pure PDA, or is it focused completely on the smartphone market?
HAUPERT: I don't know if they have a restriction, and I wouldn't imagine any of the big companies coming out with a pure PDA. But because it is a free operating system, you can bet all the companies that make low-end devices like all the low-end MP3 players and strange brands you never heard of, you will see little PDAs and Netbooks with WiFi and the Google Android OS in all different form factors from those companies.
WIKIBON: Does DDH Software have plans to support either or both of these platforms (iPhone/Touch or Android)?
HAUPERT: We have a version for the iPhone and iPod Touch in development (Update: this was released in Mid October). We started the day they released the developer's kit. I am interested in Android, but I am going to wait. The only US carrier saying that they will have something out this year is T-Mobile. Being that they are one of the smaller sized carriers, I don't know if you will see enough demand there for applications this year. So with that in mind, we only have a certain amount of time and resources anyway. We will start with the iPhone version and see how things progress with Android.
WIKIBON: So you didn't participate in the Android developers' contest?
HAUPERT: The challenge? No. I think when you enter a contest like this, they really were looking for new concepts rather than established applications. If you say we have this great productivity app that is already on this other platform, they aren't going to make that the winner of the contest. They want something you can only do on their platform.
WIKIBON: HanDBase is available on a lot of platforms today. Do you see your main market as in the consumer market or in business?
HAUPERT: Actually it always was the business market. Even though the application can be used for a shopping list or password manager or, when you are moving, a packing list – basically a list maker. But the majority of sales have always been on the business side. What happens is users realize that they need to be able to do something more efficiently in their jobs, and they come up with their own solutions, because they don't have to be trained as developers, they can just whip up the solution in this simple database program. So it has been used in business but by individuals, not necessarily the entire enterprise. We are seeing the enterprise side of it grow, where for instance a hospital will come to us and say they are rolling HanDBase out for all their nurses. But what hasn't changed is the people who use it to solve their own work problems and become more efficient. I'm really proud of that, because I know the employees who have worked best for me (as an employer) are those who look outside the box and try to find a better way to do something. The people using our applications are those people.
WIKIBON: I have noticed that you seem to be changing the focus of your marketing to an extent from selling directly to consumers to promoting HanDBase as a platform for handheld application development that then can run on any platform that supports HanDBase. Given the proliferation of different operating systems in the handheld/smartphone area, this makes a lot of sense to me. Is this a new direction for the company?
HAUPERT: What happened is we have a lot of people who come up with solutions for their work or whatever interests they have, and they want to go into business and sell it, or they want to distribute it to their office and don't want to deal with getting everybody to come to us to buy licenses. So that was the motivation for moving in this direction. We don't want to be competing with a compiler. So we want to make it possible for people to distribute what they came up with. Hopefully people will come up with other ideas and come back to buy HanDBase anyway. So that was the motivation there, and what we've been doing is going in both directions. Back in the '90s we saw a lot of companies adopting Rapid Adaptation (RAD) tools. Several companies make those tools and approach the market that way. Then there are people who make client applications and they offer their products that way. So we are crossing the line and doing both. I wouldn't say we have a focus on one over the other, although the majority of our business is in the individual copies that people are buying.
When we started our multi-platform approach, the goal was that we want to have applications on all the popular platforms, so if the company has five Blackberry users and seven Palm users, and several Windows Mobile users, they'd be able to use our software regardless. That was the original motivation. What we find is we are giving people more confidence that they can move from platform to platform and not have to worry about what happens to the data. Early on when we ported from Palm to Windows Mobile, nobody was considering moving from one to the other. Well, with the port people started saying, “I can move my data now, so I can start looking at those other devices.” Now we see it a lot that people are switching. And they come to us and say, “I have an iPhone, so when will you have a version for the iPhone?” They have the confidence that we will have that because we have all the other platforms.
It is a juggling act to keep up. Some platforms like to redesign themselves. Palm has done that a lot in the last few years. Symbian did a major upgrade about two years ago of their base operating system. What we found was that moving to the new version wasn't just a matter of fixing a few things in the application, it was more like write it over again. But we had to do it.
WIKIBON: Are you seeing a strong response to this approach to the market?
HAUPERT: I would say we find the approach of having HanDBase run on multiple platforms keeps people loyal to our platform, and they are just switching from device to device. The thing is it does take a lot of work. If you have a Palm and Windows Mobile version, you would think it is double the work, but it seems to be more more because you want the user interface on each platform to be natural and intuitive on that platform; you don't want it to be just an exact copy of what is on the other platform. You really need to learn the normal flow of activity on every platform, so you aren't the red-headed stepchild on those platforms. You want to have the native feel to it. And at the same time, you have this core set of functionality that must exist for each platform and fit into that paradigm well.
WIKIBON: One issue I see facing companies is custom development on handheld platforms. Organizations are struggling with this whole handheld thing. So they decide to standardize on XYZ, and two years later that device is not available at all any more, and new platforms are appearing, and then the CEO comes in and says, “Why can't I do this on my new iPhone?” And the CIO can't look the CEO in the eye and say, “Because we don't support it”, because that may be a career-ending moment. Or they decide for good reasons to move say from Palm or WinMobile to Blackberry, but they have five custom applications on the old platform that they have to completely redevelop in a new development environment.
HAUPERT: The lock in occurs in the case of a very large company because you have 10,000 Palm devices in inventory. Software is a smaller issue than hardware in that case. On the smaller scale, with a few hundred handhelds a company can make the switch to a new device easily. So yes that is a definite advantage we have, and that is why we go through all the effort to maintain HanDBase on several operating systems. We want people to have the confidence that they can develop the application and still use it years later, after the original device may have long disappeared.
Either a business will contact us and say somebody in this department developed a prototype, and we want to make a run time out of it to go forward. Or they come to us with an idea and say we think you could develop this in HanDBase. Then I explain to them that we can do that for them, but they can do it themselves. It is not an environment where you need to hire someone; you can find someone in the organization to do that. So we spend a lot of time developing custom apps for companies that really could do it themselves but just haven't tried.
WIKIBON: Any chance you will consider a Windows version of HanDBase to put those applications on ultraportable tablets?
HAUPERT: We already have one! HanDBase Desktop on Windows is our most powerful version. It is one of those things that we had to change it so it would work without a handheld because we had a lot of people asking for that. We have a lot of users who don't use a handheld because they use the Windows desktop. So we had to create a custom user who is one without a handheld and have a specific folder where all the databases would go. They can still sync with the other users and so forth.
WIKIBON: Handhelds are increasingly becoming networked devices. Will the next major version of HanDBase include support for integration with online services such as Facebook and other networked resources that developers working on your platform can draw on?
HAUPERT: It wasn't necessarily the network features but the widget aspect of it, which is where you can add a Facebook widget to your HanDBase data. We don't have any development in that area right now. But network integration is the direction we are going. These devices are finally after 10 years are at the point where we can count of the connection being there pretty often. We don't have to wait for users to go back to their desktop to synchronize. They can synchronize when they are out and about, they can synchronize to a Web page. That is the direction we are going in. At that point, when you have that, then something like a widget to let you put your shopping list or whatever on Facebook might be a next step.
WIKIBON: I am interested in that because I think handhelds will replace laptops. Sure the laptop is always going to be more powerful, but if I am connected to the Internet I can access huge servers and run applications there if I want to, and I can store any amount of data in the cloud. All I need the handheld for is to display the results of the analysis. Why do I need a 20 pound laptop for that? A salesperson for a manufacturer, for instance, can be sitting in his customer's office, and the customer can say, “We need this order. How soon can you get it to us?” And I can turn on my handheld, access the mainframe at the plant, check inventory and the production queue in our ERP system and give the customer an answer immediately. There certainly are things you want a big screen for – I would not want to do anything graphic on a PDA – but I can put the handheld into its cradle and connect that to a big screen.
HAUPERT: I think everybody is heading into the cloud. Everybody knew it was the direction we would go, but the network access was not that reliable on the handheld. That is getting better. But there is still an opportunity for online and offline mode. If you are relying solely on online data and you don't have the connection you are dead in the water. A lot of our users are in hospitals where they don't always have good network access in some rooms or areas. So you have to do both and have it very transparent, so if they can't get a connection they at least have the data they need at that moment. For instance Google came out with its “Gears”, which is a way to let their online apps work offline, because they realized people aren't always in a place where they can access the network.
WIKIBON: What is your vision for the future of the handheld market in general and HanDBase in particular? Given all the different competing technologies, do you see a shakeout coming?
HAUPERT: I think that is still a few years away. I feel like there is still a few more years of most people not necessarily caring what platform they are on. There are people like us who have a vested interest in a certain application platform we have been using. Then there are people with a regular phone who buy an iPhone because they like the music part of it. Those people are still the real majority, and I think there are still a few more years where it doesn't matter how many different smart phone types there are. There is a point particularly in the business market where you see standardization on two or three operating environments. In the enterprise world Blackberry had a real grip. So I think you will see this more on the business side than the consumer side. But I think because people are still waiting to see what the new Symbian free version will be like and what the Android devices will be like, I think we still have a few years of wading through all this mess.
WIKIBON: Do you have any hints about what we will see in the next version of HanDBase?
HAUPERT: I think we've alluded to some of that with the online aspects. That is the number one feature. And the other big feature is that the new front-end of our application that you will be able to customize. So that is the last mile that we have to redesign, so your application can really look custom designed. But really the online is the biggest feature, besides of course the versions for the new platforms that we are working on.
