I notice most of the discussions about Blackberry database options are old, and generally not too informative.
As of today, March 31st, 2010, what is the best, most universally supported, free database option available for Blackberry developers?
I heard SQLite is available for JDE v5, but last I checked, that was still in beta, and I didn't want to commit to developing on a system that is not supported by most of the phones in service.
Thing is, I don't see any dates on these claims. For all I know, the announcements I am reading are from 2008.
So, I am still on v 4.7. I need to use a relational DB for the app I am developing, but there aren't many resources for DB handling available - or at least resources that are useful to me. I find a lot of "tutorials" that assume you know everything there is to know about Blackberry development, or Java. But no complete classes or anything. Many of these examples don't even work. Eclipse gives warnings and errors from code copied and pasted from other people's examples.
I can answer any questions that may assist in this case. Hopefully, this thread will help many BB developers in the future.
Before v5 I don't think there is a native relational database that you can work with on the Blackberry, the closest thing is the Persistant Store API, however I think that there are 3rd party libraries that you can use, like SQL Anywhere.
Depending on the Java dialect supported on your Blackberry version, db4o could also work well for your usecase. It's an object database, quite similar to Perst.
Ok, in case anyone has had similar experiences with this, here is what I have done:
The JAR class path thing was resolved through no help at all from these sites.
What I did to get an outside JAR included in my package was to right click the package name in the navigation menu (Eclipse) - then select Build Path - then add libraries.
From this I was able to modify an existing library to include the JAR for the perst package.
Now I am able to import org.garret.perst.*
We'll see if there are any complications.
Forgive the number of posts, maybe it will help someone else down the way.
Related
I am a newbie for PowerBuilder and for Windows application. I have few projects which consists corresponding code in it and after merging all that I get the final product. The problem I am facing right now is that I don't know how to make a setup of my Windows app using PowerBuilder. If I can get step by step procedure with tiny explanation, I will be able to achieve it already. Have tried Google but ended up with complex confusion. I have created the .exe, but that .exe does not work on any other computer. So please guys help me out.
Thanks
There are two parts to creating a setup program for your application: defining the files and other resources that need to deployed, and building those resources into a setup executable package.
For defining files and resources, you've made it impossible for anyone to even take a shot by referring to two very different (but similar origins) versions of the product in your tags: PowerBuilder (aka PowerBuilder Classic) and PowerBuilder.NET. The deployment requirements for apps built from each of these is very different. However, even if we knew, the best advice is to go through the manuals and review what is required of the features of your specific application. (e.g. if you don't use rich text, deploying the files required to support it would be a waste). A generic list is, IMHO, just bad advice.
As far as building a setup package goes, the first decision is which package building software to pick (none comes with PowerBuilder). Any Windows setup package builder should do. I've used InstallShield and Inno, vastly preferring the latter (after many years of using the former). I know you want steps to walk you through, but a walk through is impossible before picking the software, and frankly, walk throughs of these setup building software has been done elsewhere much better than I'd do.
The bottom line is that the answer isn't as simple as you seem to have been hoping, but it is attainable.
Good luck,
Terry.
I am planning to build a website for courses online, teachers can create their courses and put their exams, students can enroll, view courses and apply for exams ..
I am a bit confused, to build it with DDN or Drupal ? which is easier and more powerful ?
I have no problem with .NET C# or PHP, although I see C# more easy to code with,
what I need to know, which CMS is better for my case ?
Which CMS is more robust & complete ?
Thanks in advance.
Of course, either platform has its pros and cons. What you're looking at building is essentially a Learning Management System, or LMS. There are a few existing LMS solutions built specifically for DotNetNuke. They include Engage: Campus, NetLearn, and Accord.
I would tell you to go with which ever platform offers you the most features for managing this kind of content for the best return on your investment, and offers you the best comfort level. If you're familiar with .Net and are comfortable in that arena, then stick with DotNetNuke. Otherwise go with another platform. However, having nearly 8 years of experience in developing solutions with DotNetNuke, and 13+ overall in developing software solutions (including PHP-based ones), if I have a choice, I always go with DotNetNuke. (And not just because I am an employee for a year now.)
I find that DotNetNuke has the most stable builds and releases overall. It's security team and features are second to none. It's community and ecosystem is unrivaled. If you're looking for a pre-built solution for any kind of business problem, chances are that the 10,000+ extensions in the Store or Forge will get you up and running with less development time and less expense. The forge has free (open source) extensions, and the median price of a store extension is $89 (LMS's are quite more expensive though).
The eco-system also boasts over 800 known ISV's out there. So chances are, if you're looking for support, not only is there an official company to provide it and back you up when something goes wrong, there are numerous other options out there in terms of companies that specialize in DotNetNuke.
One last thing on the releases... DotNetNuke has a known roadmap, a frequent release cycle, and an outstanding reputation for backwards compatibility. Your extensions will continue to work on the platform as you upgrade to take advantage of the latest and greatest features added to the platform, usability updates, bug fixes, and security updates.
As a Sales Engineer at DNN Corp, I hear all kinds of use cases, and I see DotNetNuke used a lot in educational institutions. They all use it to varying degrees as not only a CMS, but also a LMS, social platform (even in schools), and more. Most schools are also standardized in some way on the Microsoft stack too, so integration is much more straight-forward using DotNetNuke.
I could go on, but this is as much time as I have to give you an informed response.
Based on what you are trying to build DotNetNuke will only really give you authentication and basic page creation out of the box. All those other elements will have to be custom coded in .NET.
If you use Drupal 7 you can build majority of that using CCK, Views and workflow without really having to do a ton of programming if you don't want to.
I have been doing DotNetNuke since 2003 and have developed tons of modules for it, including some publicly available at www.dnnspot.com
If I was in your shoes I would do Drupal, but I know both pretty well.
ACTUALLY - If 'I' was in your shoes I would do Ruby on Rails now ;) but ... Drupal would work pretty well and you could get alot if not all of this done without slinging much code. Drupal is crazy.
DNN is now built on C# but has always been on .NET. I'm in a similar position as I code in PHP and .NET and have used Drupal and have been working on DNN for the last 4 years. I find that Module Development in DNN is wonderful.
i hope that helps.
Full featured Learning Management Systems (LMS) require substantial development (man decades), especially if you want to support SCORM eLearning content. Both DNN and Drupal will offer you most of the add on functionality that you will need in addition to the LMS features - the ability to build web pages, rich text editors, etc.
I would evaluate the different the LMS available for each platform and make your choice based on how robust the LMS are. In addition, evaluate how easily the LMS integrates with add on modules such as forums, wikis, etc. Most of our clients select our LMS without any knowledge of the portal framework beneath it.
Based on these evaluation metrics I am confident that you will find the Interzoic Accord LMS running on DNN to be a superior choice.
Chris
I am planning to develop one website which should have following features
Database integration
online payment system
forum
I need suggestion for my following questions before I will proceed to develop my site.
Is there any any single development tool which can provide me one webserver + mysql database + user login + java-script support + webpage design + online payment system and forum and easy site maintenance ?
What best practice to start development of this type of project?
How much effort it need to maintain this type of project?
"database integration" isn't really a feature - it's the tool you use to deliver your features. A feature might be a shopping cart, or a product catalogue, or a structured navigation system, etc.
In order to talk to a database, you almost certainly need some back-end code to be running, and you need to be able to program.
Yes, there are frameworks/tools that accelerate this, but you do need to invest at least in the basics of learning how to code.
Alternatively, if what you really want is to build an online shop, sign up for a "software as a service" offering where all you have to do is configure the product.
Sounds like you could use a framework to do your project with. Take a look at http://www.drupal.org.
If you're including an online payment system then you need to ensure that it's high quality, developed by people who know how to properly secure such a system. You should also be looking for a solution that handles pretty much everything you need it to do or that allows you to plug in modules for additional functionality rather than modifying solid code. There are so many ways for a developer to foul up even the best designed system that it's best to just leave it alone unless you're fully up-to-speed on secure coding guidelines.
IF what you really need is a way to sell things, and content to manage, then what you're looking for is a shopping cart with content management capabilities. There are plenty of good ones out there, and you should Google them. We went with the AspDotnetStorefront because it suited our needs, and was PACB certified, but there are plenty of others out there. Shop around if this is the type of thing you're looking for.
That said, you can get a good framework that has shopping cart options, and also the ability to add/modify modules to provide functionality with DotNetNuke. There are a wide variety of pre-existing modules to choose from as well. And you certainly can't beat the price on the free version. Developing for it takes some getting used to (there's a learning code even for experienced .NET developers) but it's pretty flexible.
Edit - I realize I'm only offering .NET suggestions, but you didn't mention what development tools/language you are comfortable with, so I'm mentioning the ones I've worked with. There are good (some arguably better, some arguably worse) Java and PHP equivalents to the suggestions I'm offering as well.
What are the pros/cons to using CTP technology for internal production softtware? By internal production I mean it's software we're not selling to anyone else but will be used by a large number of internal employees spread nationally.
I can see the obvious plusses (features and functionality that beats existing systems) and minuses (bugs, lack of support, changes in the interface, risk of discontinuation.) I'd like to hear from people with experience using preview tech in production software and the kinds of hurdles and things that we might not be considering.
The technology in question is the Silverlight Bing map control CTP.
Thanks,
It's a call that can be tough to make and really depends on your circumstances. A beta control from Microsoft, targeted at developers, that fills an immediate and important need, may be just the right fit if you are understanding the lack of support.
Especially given how quickly internal apps and even public sites go through revisions and quick improvement milestones.
The Silverlight Toolkit has been trying a new model for the last year; we've introduced special quality bands, to help customers make a call, and understand the investment and guarantees that the product team is making. I sort of hope we can get other teams to make a similar commitment.
The AutoCompleteBox control was essentially CTP a year ago, in the Preview quality band. Since then we invested and shipped it in the Silverlight 3 SDK as a mature, supported product.
Have a discussion with your management to define what risk you can take on while still enabling your internal users with quality value (scenarios that do work great, regardless of the released quality under the hood).
Consider source code!
One thing that you can also do is have a discussion around source and binaries. Although you won't always have an option to grab the source for many controls or frameworks, there are a lot of open source releases available today. Your control vendor may also be willing to offer a source license.
The cost for maintaining your own private branch of an open source control is high, but it is an avenue that can be explored if you need fixes earlier, want to add your own functionality, or feel that a developer day of work might just get an existing control customized for your scenario.
Updating with some more specific links:
Silverlight Toolkit
Here's more information on the Silverlight Toolkit's Quality Bands, for those that are interested. They are Experimental, Preview, Stable, and Mature; Preview is much like CTP, Preview - Beta, and Mature - Released and supported.
These are all just words, but they are "the word" of the team.
Microsoft Connect
WRT the Bing Maps control, I did see that there is a Microsoft Connect site out there. That's a great resource to have - although I am not in the program, typically Connect sites are there to help provide more frequent drops, a set of forums for discussing any issues, and a way to easily get in contact with the developers and testers on the product.
Other vendors
There are many other vendors out that that provide early releases, feel free to use the comments to add a non-Microsoft angle to this. I wanted to provide my opinion on these topics since I'm pretty familiar with a lot of the Silverlight-specific Microsoft frameworks that are out there.
Personally I don't think it's a good idea, as essentially your internal employees are your market, so this is essentially production software.
So things like licencing, compliance, support, SLA's may need to be thought through.
I know that would be frowned upon by my IT Director and Internal Audit people, to name two.
Are you reasonably sure it will work and not kill your employees' pets? Then it ought to be fine.
Seriously, just be sure it works for the target audience.
As always, IMHO.
Sometimes you just dont want to wait for a new feature, for instance we started using SQL Server 2008 in our new architecture just for the DateTimeOffset. We used this application internally, but this wasnt a major deployment. If its stable enough then why not. The Pros are you dont have to wait, you're testing new techniques, code and keeping up with technologies.
The cons are that some features will change, API arent finished or some things get renamed. These things present themselves pretty quickly and are normally easy to change. Also some things may not be documented, but there is always someone blogging about it.
With the tools available today like HockeyApp to manage betas for my apps I am less afraid to use preview APIs in beta versions of my apps. This way I can work out new functionality with real users who want to try out the bleeding edge.
When I have keep the new version limited to a small set of users this has been fine.
The times I have used preview technology in production I have been occasionally bitten by the bleeding edge. I have had to work around bugs or live with them while I waited for them to be fixed.
Has anybody got any real world stories build mobile web sites with NetBiscuits?
Someone told me it was the next big thing in mobile development (http://www.netbiscuits.com/home) and it looks pretty good from their site. Just wondered if anybody (besides them) has actually used it.
From a few months time working with it, I can say that they're indeed one of the best (if not the best) out there. The support is also insanely quick and good.
Only thing making me stop using it is the price. Especially if you're a small company and want to use their POI feature.
However I have yet to find a good replacement. May end up rolling my own version...
Edit: Related question.
They have created an entire xml (bml) based markup language that emulates html that has a very steep learning curve. I would seriously reconsider using it.
I have seen it working nicely. It also supports ASP.NET controls SDK that can be used to write ASP.NET app from Visual Studio. Once this app is deployed on your premise, you can use live bridge agent to connect this app to a Live Bridge server that Net Biscuits hosts. Your app is called a backend app in this case. This is a very useful feature when you do want to have Forms capability in your app and also want it to be accessible on NetBiscuits platform.
Check http://kb.netbiscuits.com/tactile/edc/livebridge_help.html. BiscuitML is also easier to grasp.
Look out for performance issues though. Customers in Australia have had response time issues - probably due to the Cloud Platform being located in USA/UK.