Press Release

PETER HOLMES CONSULTING, INC launches HB++ for Palm Powered™ handhelds and smartphones at the European PalmSource Developer Conference

Munich, Germany, September 22nd, 2003 HB++ provides a cost-effective and appealing solution to seamlessly develop and deploy mobile applications for the Palm OS® platform. Combining the ease-of-use of a Visual Basic® like language, the power of a true compiler and advanced database connectivity features, HB++ proves to be the expected cutting-edge tool to mobilize the enterprise.

HB++ not only features dozens of classes encapsulating Palm OS native functions, from IR transfers to networking. It also provides barcode scanner management, an integrated database engine with SQL features, access to external API calls, ARM support, a complete debugger, a conduit generator and great database connectivity tools.

"HB++ is a true object-oriented Basic compiler. It allows your project to be compiled to a single .prc file, with no runtime required! Moreover, your code can run more than 100 times faster than with interpreted languages:. With HB++, compile is not just another menu item!" said Jean-Philippe Amarﾃｩ, founder and CEO of Peter Holmes Consulting, Inc.

HB++ uses a highly structured object-oriented Basic language, with validation, checking, calculation and control features to your app, in event-triggered scripts. "If you are used to working with Visual Basic®, don't change your developing habits: reuse your code with only a very few changes!" adds Pascal Levy, HB++ Technical Manager. Levy continues: "HB++ is easy to learn and easy to use: no steep learning curve and no low-level Palm OS® API skills needed. Developing with HB++ is real fun! For example, you don't need more than 10 lines of code to download a Palm OS® application over the internet thru an HTTP request and install it."

All usual UI objects are provided by HB++: checkboxes, push-buttons, menus, buttons, popups, selectors, text fields, labels, lists, scrollbars, fields, and grids. All these controls rely on and support standard Palm OS® functions. They are not emulated: it directly leads to quicker forms display and faster reactions. One can even write one's own HB++ custom controls with HB++ and reuse them easily.

HB++ provides advanced data manipulation functions, such as SQL queries, recordsets and string matching. And since HB++ relies on standard Palm OS databases, they keep the same advantages in terms of compactness and efficiency, while providing excellent compatibility and interoperability with other applications, including of course the Palm OS built-in PIM applications.

Thanks to HB++'s Conduit Generator and its native XML support, the creation of sophisticated synchronization schemes is fast and easy. With HB++, synchronization of mobile and desktop databases is straightforward.

"When in 1999 we started developing applications for the Palm OS Platform, it quickly became clear to us that we would be much more competitive - lower development cost, shorter time-to-market and smarter applications - if only we had a good RAD tool, something as simple as an object-oriented Basic, with a real compiler, a clean IDE and seamless database access. Our technical skills and our experience of the Palm OS® Platform would have been of no help if we had not also some sense of challenge: instead of dreaming of this RAD tool, we simply decided to design and develop it!", tells Jean-Philippe Amarﾃｩ. "HB++ is the result of this unique process, a collaboration between our R&D team and our mobile applications developers. Whenever our developers or partners needed an extra feature for the projects they were working on, it was instantly added in HB++."

HB++ comes with a suite of tools to enable full access to corporate databases from remote handheld devices: the suite provides user connections control, users, groups and permissions management, connectivity with standard back-office databases (ORACLE, SQL server, MySQL窶ｦ), a lightweight SQL client and a package of HB++ classes allowing to execute SQL queries from the handheld on the back-office databases. Theses modules are provided without any redistribution cost or per users fee, which makes a big difference with other synchronization products.

What users said about HB++ Gilles Sonou, in charge of Umanis Clinical Research, Contract Research Organization (CRO) of Umanis Group said "HB++ is the best development tool we have ever used. Since two years, HB++ allow us to seamless develop and install thousand of Palm Powered devices with specific software in several clinical studies or marketing survey. We have increased our productivity and our quality process by using HB++ for writing tailor-made applications using PalmServer middleware or OneBridge Mobile Groupware (e.g XTND), dedicated to Physicians/Investigators, Patients Diaries, CRAs or Sales Forces Tools. Along with the developments of the Palm OS platform (of Palm III Tungsten T), HB ++ allowed us, while encouraging us over the technical support of HB ++, to be continuously in a position to answer to the technical developments and to offer the best Palm technology to our Pharmaceutical Industry customers. HB++ let us write smart applications for a smart platform, that runs much faster compared to the interpreted RAD tools products, much faster to build than Low level compilers. Our IT competencies allowed us to train a dozen developers for Palm OS and HB ++ environment in a few days that answer to the quality prerequisites imposed by our Quality Management System (QMS), meeting the ISO9001 version 2000 standard."

See http://www.palm.com/fr/enterprise/healthcare.html

"HB++ for Palm OS is designed to accelerate the development of robust, enterprise-grade Palm OS applications for today's mobile workforce", said Larry Berkin, director of developer marketing, PalmSource, Inc. With HB++ Visual Basic programmers can leverage their experience and bring Palm OS applications to market faster with increased mobile connectivity to back-office databases.

PRICE/AVAILABILITY
HB++ is now available for an estimated price of U.S. $1259 on the web at www.handheld-basic.com

ABOUT PALM OS
Palm OS is known for the power and flexibility of its sophisticated, easy-to-use interface. As the foundation for more than 29 million mobile devices, Palm OS platform provides an open, modular architecture that allows licensees including Aceeca, AlphaSmart, Fossil, Garmin, GSL, Handspring, HuneTec, Kyocera, Legend, Palm, Samsung, Sony, Symbol and Tapwave as well as Palm OS Ready Partners including ATI, Intel, MediaQ, Motorola, Samsung Semiconductor and Texas Instruments to create innovative products in a variety of sizes and form factors for both individuals and enterprise users.

ABOUT Peter Holmes Consulting, Inc.
Created in 1998, Peter Holmes Consulting developed its first Palm OS® applications in 1999, using the development tools available at that time, which proved to be far below expectations, both in terms of ease-of-use and performance, hence the decision to create HB++. Hundreds of projects have already been developed using HB++, covering the full range of sectors and industries - and more than 55,000 Palm Powered devices running HB++ applications have been deployed. Peter Holmes Consulting, Inc. has gained a global understanding of the Palm OS® software market, an outstanding ability to follow the latest technological trends, and to turn this knowledge into tools that suit the needs of the most demanding developers.

PalmSource and Palm OS are registered trademarks and Palm Powered is a trademark of PalmSource, Inc., a subsidiary of Palm, Inc. Microsoft, Visual Basic, Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and / or other countries.

This release and related PalmSource materials can be found in the PalmSource partner press kit, located in PalmSource's online press room at http://www.palmsource.com/press/.