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

Interface with PDA's?

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

    Interface with PDA's?

    I am presently using PhatNotes to log field activities. In general, it is adequate, but its printout is poorly designed. With single records, it's poor; for multiple records it's rubbish. I've spent the past hour or so looking around, and I can't find anything that would indicate that I can use A4(etc) to develop apps for a Mobile 6 PDA.

    If I could do this, I can immediately think of three specialized uses for it that I could sell with perhaps 1/2 million users over a five year product span (Two products, one with two data views.) I haven't used Alpha software in several years (out of the business entirely) but I am certain that I can code the database portion ... I just haven't a clue about syncing data between devices.

    Can this be done directly from Alpha (any version)? That's the way I'd prefer to go since I am more of a 'hands on' kind of tinkerer.

    Is there a third-party developer who has solved this and is willing to license /sell (sanely priced) code for it? I would want to support both Windows and Linux on the base computer for Palm, Linux and Mobile 6 on the PDA, but could start with Windows to Smartphone for starters (foot in the door software).

    #2
    Re: Interface with PDA's?

    Bill,
    PDA's and the like use 16 bit architecture...Windows, and therefore the software designed for Windows, use 32 bit===not compatible. Alpha designs 32 bit software to used on Windows.

    So the software for a PDA and such has to be developed with a tool designed to create 16 bit software (Not Alpha) and then an interface would have to be used to link/synch the two. I believe Handango was a possibility to use--a search on the messageboard can be used to bring up some older threads referring to this.

    It may also be a possibility to use a handheld version of Excel with a template and then import that into a Window's Excel that could be imported into an Alpha database.

    Oh yeah--Alpha does not create for Linux
    Mike
    __________________________________________
    It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
    It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
    Henry David Thoreau
    __________________________________________



    Comment


      #3
      Re: Interface with PDA's?

      Thanks, Mike. That is, at least, a start. I found PhatNotes on Handango. I'll do look there for something along the line of some development tools. If PhatNotes responds favorably to my support request (favorably = good solution) then I can let this slide and just refer people to them. Otherwise, I'm going to look further into developing the products I'm interested in. I was able to buy one ... but its author has no intention of upgrading it and it has a calculation error.

      Like the operating system it is written for, it is 'barely good enough' ... sometimes.

      Gaaack ... I've already got too much on my plate to even consider learning to program between devices! Maybe I can talk my son, the computer genius, into coding something up for me.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Interface with PDA's?

        I have found that WAS apps tend to work quite well on PDAs and suchlike, even the AJAX stuff works on Opera Mini for example... But IF a RT client was to be developed for something other than Windows, I'd prefer it to be for Mac...

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Interface with PDA's?

          I've not done it with Alpha yet, but in the db we use at the moment I use Pendragon Forms (which runs on Palm and PocketPC PDAs). Our current db does'nt sync directly with the PDAs but Pendragon Forms downloads its data to / uploads data from an Access database and we use Access as a kind of 'intermediary'. You can either use the Access db that comes with Pendragon Forms, or have it sync directly with 'tables' in your own Access application.
          I know you didn't mention Access, but most people have it on their PC somewhere as part of Office, and you could possibly use it as the intermediary between the PDAs and Alpha - (I'm just starting to learn Alpha, so I may be wrong here), but can't you create a passive link table link to the Access tables, and exchange data that way.
          i.e sync PDA (eg HotSync the Palm PDA), which just downloads it into the relevant Access tables, then refresh the link in Alpha. You wouldn't even have to open the Access database.

          Anyway, thats how we do it at the moment, but not with Alpha...yet !

          Rich

          Comment

          Working...
          X