Programming for BREW,the first steps

Okay,as promised,here is a quick guide to starting out with BREW(Binary Runtime Environment For Wireless).

BREW is a platform created and owned by QUALCOMM Inc. the company behind the CDMA technology.I don't know if I'm entirely accurate but this technology is in direct competition with J2ME.(and comparable as well)
For More information about BREW go to BREW Homepage or BREW on Wiki .
My graduation Project was to create a 'Personal Finance Manager' for the BREW platform.Our sponsor company wanted nothing to do with the project,they just wanted it completed,so we,4 untrained students were basically on our own,our graduation project hanging on a technology we'd heard about for the first time!
Without digressing further from the topic,I'll just mention a few pointers(!) about what you need to have.

1.Hands on Experience with a programming language (preferably C/C++)
2.Basic Information about handling Cellphones,and possible events that may occur
during use (pressing a key is also an event)
3.Patience.Lots of it.

Programming Environment(for basic application) :
1.Microsoft Visual Studio 6 or later.
2.Brew SDK
3.BREW SDK tools
-addin BREW application wizard for Visual Studio
-MIF Editor
-BREW Simulator
-BREW compressed image authoring tool

#2 and #3 can be obtained from Qualcomm's site.

That is all that you need to start programming in BREW.The BREW app wizard will define all the 'mandatory' functions in the source file.You need to add suitable code within them.
In addition to source file,you need to create a Module Information File(MIF).It contains the necessary information about your application.
Another thing you need to do is decide your Programming language.BREW applications can be created using either C or C++.It's simply down to personal preference.Personally,I had worked for the majority of my time with procedural languages,so I chose C.However make this choice with extreme care.Once you have started in any 1 language,be sure that there isn't much help out on the Internet.The only Help you can get is via the BREW developer extranet which costs quite a lot (way over my budget)
Go through the example programs supplied with the SDK and get the feel of the code flow.My group and I especially found the Finance tracker and Netdiagnostics examples very helpful.

Here are some snapshots of our project titled 'Personal Finance Manager for BREW enabled Phones'


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Budding BREWers,you're in Luck.Here's a collection (small one)of books that helped us during coding. Link
RAR password: thetechprescription

Please leave comments if this post was in anyay helpful to you.
Thanks for reading
Varun