Somehow we lost the understanding of offline-first, though back when I learned about it in the .NET Compact Framework days, it was just assumed - you had a Pock

Somehow we lost the understanding of offline-first, though back when I learned about it in the .NET Compact Framework days, it was just assumed - you had a Pocket PC with some cellular sure, but that was expensive and unreliable, and Wi-Fi wasn't a guarantee. Hopefully at some point you could get your Pocket PC docked in a cradle for Exchange ActiveSync, but otherwise it was almost Wi-Fi, IrDA, or bust. So yes, you have a small SQL Server Express cache of data and you build around syncing data and working with it offline.