Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

If there's no internet service

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    If there's no internet service

    I have two customer suddenly with important apps that will likely need to make accommodations for a loss of internet service, for a day or few days. Most of these interruptions can be "planned" with today's weather forecasting but not every one of them.

    I Googled around, and didn't really find much on a strategy to deal with this. So, my question:

    Are there ideas, schemes, things others have done to help keep users of a web-based database system working until the 'net comes back up? Then, of course, update the data when service is restored?

    The best thing I can think of is a desktop/laptop A5 app that makes it easy for the user to download the critical stuff for any expected outage, then makes it easy to upload new/changed data afterwards.
    -Steve
    sigpic

    #2
    Re: If there's no internet service

    You can use a iPad that has LTE or 3G that works for us.
    Reed Brown
    ITOT Solutions, Inc.
    Alpha v12

    Comment


      #3
      Re: If there's no internet service

      A primary feature of both these apps is the anywhere mobile capability of this because of what Alpha Software has provided. That's going to go a long ways for us.
      -Steve
      sigpic

      Comment


        #4
        Re: If there's no internet service

        I think it depends on the reason the app is knocked offline.
        Usually, power issues are the reason servers get knocked offline.
        Get enough redundant power, and that problem should be eliminated.

        The 2nd issue is usually a route to the app server.
        This is usually as close as your ISP, but can be caused by any number
        of circumstances on the internet (a malfunctioning router or "backhoe Bob" come to mind).

        Your best chance in this case would be a mobile hotspot from one of the wireless service
        providers. I think you would also want some kind of dynamic dns so that people can actually
        get to your app server as easily as possible.
        Gregg
        https://paiza.io is a great site to test and share sql code

        Comment


          #5
          Re: If there's no internet service

          Originally posted by Steve Workings View Post
          The best thing I can think of is a desktop/laptop A5 app that makes it easy for the user to download the critical stuff for any expected outage, then makes it easy to upload new/changed data afterwards.
          I don't see why you would need a desktop/laptop app. I would use a webapp with local installation (webapp+database+was) as backup. And use a standard tool for synchronisation of the database. Synchronize local database ones a day and you are even relative save for unplanned outages :-)
          Ger Kurvers
          Alpha Anywhere / V4.6.1.9- Build 6488
          Development: Mysql, windows 10 64 Applicationserver: standard on Windows server 2019

          Comment


            #6
            Re: If there's no internet service

            The best thing I can think of is a desktop/laptop A5 app that makes it easy for the user to download the critical stuff for any expected outage, then makes it easy to upload new/changed data afterwards.
            hello

            i think that is the best approach. there is a web based pos system - lightning POS that uses an emergency module, that does exactly same thing, i think.( i have no personal knowledge the information page states the mechanism)
            the following is from their page

            "Since Lightning Online Point of Sale is contingent on your stores internet connection, what happens if your store, or our multiple servers, experience a connectivity issue? We have that covered!"
            thanks for reading

            gandhi

            version 11 3381 - 4096
            mysql backend
            http://www.alphawebprogramming.blogspot.com
            [email protected]
            Skype:[email protected]
            1 914 924 5171

            Comment


              #7
              Re: If there's no internet service

              Steve, what is the database back-end? You may be able to set up a local configuration (as someone else was suggesting) where the webserver/db/WAS is local, and have replication set up so that the local DB and web-db are always in sync.

              If connectivity is lost, they can open a local version of the application, and then when connectivity is restored, the db is usually sync'd automatically and they can switch back to the internet app... or if this is a frequent occurance, they can always use the local application, have it sync to a remote db for replication to other "local" sites..

              just a thought.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: If there's no internet service

                hello

                i am confused about the WAS setup. i thought you can have only one installation of that license for all to reach out and get the data(for unlimited license) so that license will reside on the server. and then if you have local installation then only one computer can access that WAS which is installed on that computer. outside users can not reach that WAS since unlimited license is activated somewhere else. since you can install alpha five on two machines only, two computers can be a local backup if the setup is web server/db/WAS locally. is my understanding correct? so what will happen if more people need to access the data? can this WAS be installed on other machines without alpha five being there? it is all greek to me. i am unable to understand. can someone explain how to do this?
                thanks for reading

                gandhi

                version 11 3381 - 4096
                mysql backend
                http://www.alphawebprogramming.blogspot.com
                [email protected]
                Skype:[email protected]
                1 914 924 5171

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: If there's no internet service

                  I sorta "mis-spoke" earlier.. I should have said dbserver/WAS... as the WAS is the web server in itself.

                  WAS can only be installed on one server. I would "assume" here that IF a software package is critical for a client, they would be willing to purchase an additional WAS license (because they'd also be spending money on a backup server, etc) for contingency purposes.

                  Gandhi, yes, WAS can be installed without AlphaFive being installed, but only on 1 server.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: If there's no internet service

                    How do you reconcile the databases if you switch back and forth? (Just wondering, as I am still learning databases.)

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: If there's no internet service

                      Steve,

                      HTML5 has local storage features for when you're offline. Alpha is very aware of that...
                      Frank

                      Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: If there's no internet service

                        @clipper87

                        so what does that mean?

                        Bob
                        Bob Alston
                        -------------------------------------------------------------------
                        http://webpages.charter.net/bobalston/bob1.htm
                        Alpha five v11 Tips

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: If there's no internet service

                          @the-mage its called Replication... I'm not OVERLY familiar with it, but I've used it to back up a live site to a second back up site in case the main site goes down..

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: If there's no internet service

                            Steve

                            This might be a case where new Access 2010 & Sharepoint capabilities would have an advantage. YOu could build an access app and store the data on Sharepoint. Each user would use the App using Access on each local PC. they can even use it disconnected from the internet, as it automatically syncs a local copy of the data with the master in Sharepoint.

                            But realistically, when you architect a web app, you need to allow for when the web app is not functional for various reasons. In my experience, the interim practice is to manually save data to enter and change until the app is once again available. for information that needs to be retrieved, I found it common to create reports or local data files, tables that can be queried for reference only.

                            YMMV

                            bob
                            Bob Alston
                            -------------------------------------------------------------------
                            http://webpages.charter.net/bobalston/bob1.htm
                            Alpha five v11 Tips

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: If there's no internet service

                              It is something they are looking/working at for their upcoming mobile framework. I have no further details.
                              Frank

                              Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X