Managed Code Summary

Managed Code facilitates rapid application development in terms of the user interface layout, its events handlers and the rich .NET libraries that are easy to couple to a managed application. Compact 2013 delivers .NET Compact Framework 3.9 with a variety of performance improvements. Unlike native code applications, "pure" managed code application binaries from previous versions of the Compact Framework will run on a Compact 2013 system that supports managed code.

Managed code applications on a Compact 2013 can act as clients to remote services such as web services. This remote access can enable an embedded device to log data to a remote service or query data services on such. Implementation of a web service client though requires some initial hand coding of the application project file as the Visual Designer does not facilitate addition of a web service reference.

An Embedded Windows application also requires access to hardware and the Win32 API. Through Platform Invoke, P/Invoke, native code functions in DLLs such as , coredll.dll can be called from managed code to access the Win32 API. Similarly custom DLLs can be implemented to structure access to hardware for managed code access through P/Invoke. Marshaling of data across the managed-native code divide needs careful consideration but with judicious choice of parameter data types, this issue is simplified. Callbacks can be implemented when the invoked native function requires a managed code function reference to be passed to it so that it can asynchronously call it back when it has finished the native processing.

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