I have an app previously written using WPF. This is used in a single physical location. The database is SQL Server (accessed with EF Core), but documents are associated with records. In the WPF app, these documents are stored on a Windows 2019 Server with domain-level authentication on an SMB share.
I've moved most of my application to MAUI which is looking really good so far. I've got EF Core working just as I want it, but I'm unsure how to access the documents on the SMB share from my Android devices. The aim is obviously as much platform-independence as possible but I'm aware that for this sort of thing I'll probably need platform specific code. The FileSystem helpers seem too high-level to achieve what I want to achieve.
How do I achieve this? I'm prepared to store documents on a secure cloud-based service but don't have a huge recurring budget.
Related
I'm a C# ASP.NET junior dev and have worked with Code First C# Databases, RESTful API's, MVC & Vue (a frontend framework sort of like React) to create websites.
Now at work and during my education, I've never handled deployment.
At this time I have a personal project. I have succesfully hosted my relational MySQL Database on phpMyAdmin and can update it from my local desktop.
My hosting site let me know they do not host C# or anything of the sort.
I found some posts suggesting Azure, AWS, others, but for every post I find I find equal people protesting those.
What is a good site to host my first REST API? I'm looking for something that can go beyond Minimum Viable Product and I'd like to host my website under the hosting service I'm currently using (so not paired hosting with the API).
What would the costprice look like for an API that's deployed and being used by clients?
I realize this cost depends on the amount of traffic, but assume a basic API used for, let's say, posting orders in an online shop (though website/app/w.e, it all would communicate through the API).
Any tips are welcome as I feel I'm swimming in the dark researching this.
Thank you
Any hosting service that grants you real access to a machine will be able to run your API as some specialized for the .net/core ecossystem.
I supposed you know about php based on phpMyAdmin service and the ecossystem of hosts that support php, although cheaper they do not exactly give you access to the machine and probably will not support .net/core as inumerous others tech stacks.
As a Junior Developer I believe you should have a little bit of practice in any deployment ecossystem so I encorage you to try most of the big clouds (Azure, GCP, AWS), but also some smaller hosts to gain experience and understand a bit more about the differences in deployment and ecosystem.
Azure will be really easy, you can create an account and post your API without any costs using an free WebApp, VS will even have publishing tools that will handle 90% of the job, GCP will be a little trickier and will require you to know a bit about containers and clusters, if you go for a non specilized host like digitalocean you will need to understand more about the Operational system and associated servers/controllers to deploy and publish
about the cost part is a lot more difficult. It will depend on the host that you are using and the load (process, memory, size, and throughput of data). In my experience I had some very small-scale APIs that required more processing or memory to accomplish some tasks like PDF generation than a medium-scale API that only had json data transaction
I'm working on a project and I need to connect to MS Access Database. The problem is that I'm using a pretty new platform , I'm using Visual Studio 2015 Xamarin and I'm developing to android with c# (thought this platform).
I already have a project with this Database using aspx and i need to connect the android application to this Database .
I could not find any answer for it , probably cause it's new .
Thanks for helping.
The problem is not related only to Xamarin or MS Access.
Everytime you want to use the same database in different applications (in your case a website and mobile apps), it is better to create a new layer (WCF Service or REST API) in order to access the same database on the server. This is more flexible and would be the right thing in your case.
Without moving the architecture to the next Level, you will always have such problems when mixing old and new technologies together.
If you just want to finish this quickly for school and use the database only on the device, then there is no way to use the MS Access database with xamarin. I recommend using SQL lite for this and there are lots of examples for that:
https://developer.xamarin.com/recipes/android/data/databases/sqlite/
It not clear if the database is to run “local” on the android, or you just wishing to connect to some web service that holds the database?
If you needing a local database to run 100% stand-alone on the Android device, then Access is not supported. Your best bet for a local database would thus be SQLite.
Perhaps you don’t need nor want a local data store. In this case if the Access database is on the server, then you would be forced to write some kind of web service to “interact” with your Android software and the web server (this would not be a "general" interface to the database, but a set of web services that you expose on the web site - this assumes you thus have control and are able to write software and implement a web service on the web site. So in this case some kind of “direct” connection to the Access database is not possible.
You could again certainly DIRECTLY connect to a server based database like SQL server – but this would assume the web hosting allows external ODBC connections to the database (often they don’t allow this, but some do).
So not clear is if you need a local database running on the Android that can THEN connect to some web or server based system, or you simply want the android to connect via the internet to some database hosted on some server and the Android device does not have a local database at all.
Regardless of the location of MSAccess, you cannot "connect" to a non server database like Access. So the question remains as to "where" you want this database to be used, and ALSO if you need a local data store on the Android device or not.
I'm pretty new in developing pc and mobile applications that need to work with the same database.
Maybe this isn't really a question but I would be happy to get some advice from you.
I have now a vs project written in C# with a Service-Based Database. I want to create a mobile app (can be only for android) and I want both the apps to use the same database.
What options do I have? Windows Azure isn't free and I can't spend any money on this so even a small trial (limitless) will work here.
I was thinking using Parse..
What do you recommend?
If I understand correctly I would suggest you create some backend service - web service or web api - that both application use which in turn uses the database.
This will allow you to re-use business logic across both applications, abstract the database away so that you can make database and logic changes without having to redeploy the applications and avoid the requirement to deploy database credentials with your applications (the backend service should employ some form of authentication)
A free-tier Azure mobile services can really help with the mobile device end but not necessarily on the PC (unless windows store app), but a free-tier Azure websites instance will happily host either web service or web api
I need to find a solution or develop one for allowing employees to enter their "hours worked" at the end of the day and then easily and quickly "pushing" that data to Quickbooks Pro 2010.
I'm trying to formulate, in my mind, how to build this type of solution. With my understanding of QuickBooks integration I think it will look like the following:
Quickbooks Software on PC
|
|
Custom App "Linking" Online DataStore to QB (on same PC as above)
|
|
Online Data Store Such as MS SQL Server, MySQL, or CSV Files
|
|
Website or Web Service Used to Receive Data From Blackberry Phones
|
|
App on Blackberry Phone to Enter and "Push" Data To Data Store in the Cloud
Do you see any flaws in this design? Any ideas how to improve on it or simplify it?
Remember, the application on the PC will likely be on a consumer or small business network that doesn't even have static IP.
On a separate note, as near as I can tell nothing yet exists that will do what I'm looking for. The apps I have looked at require you to import iif files into your phone (specifically ReportAway). During an initial test of the app, the import failed to import anything but did not produce any error messages. It's unclear to me how the data gets input from the BlackBerry app to QuickBooks but it appears to simply be CSV files. If someone does know of an existing app for this I'd appreciate knowing about it. However, we may still opt to program our own anyway.
You're on the right track with what you proposed. I have a few further suggestions:
Instead of building a custom app that sits alongside QuickBooks, why not re-use something that's already built? For instance, the QuickBooks Web Connector or (if you're building a SaaS service) the Sync Manager via the Intuit Partner Platform? Both of those are specifically designed to enable web/remote applications to communicate with QuickBooks. There are C# examples of doing almost exactly what you're talking about included in the QuickBooks SDK, and open source QuickBooks libraries for doing what you're asking.
Why would you ever want to use CSV files for storing data? Do yourself a favor, and use a database.
You could easily make the phone end of things available via more than once interface- build a web interface for iPhones/web browsers, and an app for Blackberry if you want. Once you have the infrastructure, the actual interface/view should be trivial to implement.
Have you looked at the available Workplace.Intuit.com apps for time tracking yet?
are you wanting to build your own app? Your best option is the build your phone app that makes a call to a web service hosted somewhere on the network where QB is hosted, the service can use the QB API to put the data where you need it. Or simply create a website that they can browse to that will make the call to the API, then you dont even need to bother with a phone app.
Phone/Website > Web Service > QB/SQL
I have solved exactly this problem in the past, in a manner very similar to as described by DustinDavis. In my case, I simply connect the smartphone client app to the php app server. App server stores the data immediately. In a separate scheduled process, app server refreshes and pushes data to QuickBooks server every 15 minutes or every 30 minutes as configured. I can provide more details if you are interested.
I'm a desktop application developer who is temporarily working in the web. I'm working with a client that wants me to build an app for use by locations all over the state; however, these locations have very shaky connectivity.
They really want a centralized web app and are suggesting I build a "lean" web app. I don't know what a "lean web app" means: small HTTP requests but lots of them? or large HTTP requests with few of them? I tend to favor chunky vs chatty.. but I've never had to worry about connectivity before.
Do I suggest a desktop app that replicates data when connectivity exists? If not, what's the best way to approach a web app when connectivity is shaky?
EDIT:
I must qualify my question with further information. Assuming the web option, they've disallowed the use of browser runtime technologies and anything that requires installation. Thus, Silverlight is out, Flash is out, Gears is out - only asp.net and javascript is available to me. Having state this, part of my question was whether to use a desktop app; I suppose that can be extended to "thicker technologies".
EDIT #2: Network is homogeneous - every node is Windows. This won't be changing.
You should get a definition of what the client means by "lean" so that you don't have confusion surrounding it. Maybe present them with several options of lean that you think they might mean. One thing I've found is it's no good at all to guess about client requirements. Just get clarification before you waste a bunch of time.
Shaky connectivity definitely favors a desktop application. Web apps are great for users that have always-on Internet connections, and that might be using a variety of different browsers and operating systems.
Your client probably has locations that are all using Windows, so a desktop application is an appropriate choice. One other advantage of web applications is that they make the deployment issue easy to deal with. Auto-update technologies like ClickOnce make the deployment and update of desktop applications almost as easy.
And not to knock Google Gears, but it's relatively new and would have to be considered more risky than a tried-and-true desktop application.
Update: and if you're limited to just javascript on the client side, you definitely do not want to make this a web app. Your application simply will not be available whenever the Internet connection is down. There are ways to save stuff locally in javascript using cookies and user stores and whatnot, but you just don't want to do this.
If connectivity is so bad, I would suggest that you write a WinForm app that downloads information, locally edits it and then uploads it. This way, if your connection goes down, all you have to do is retry until it works.
They seem to be suggesting a plain vanilla web app that doesn't use AJAX or rely on .NET postbacks or do anything that might make it break down horribly if your connection goes away for a bit. Instead, it should be designed so that you can hit Refresh until it works. In other words, they seem to want the closest thing to a WinForm app, only uglier.
You may consider using a framework like Google Gears to help provide functionality during network down time. This allows users to connect to the web page once (with a functioning connection) and then be able to use the web app from then on, even without a connection.
When the network is restored, the framework can sync changes back with the central database.
There is even a tutorial for using Google Gears with the .Net Framework.
Gears with other languages
You mention that connectivity is shaky at these locations, but that the app needs to be centralized. One thing you might consider is using multiple decentralized read database servers and a single centralized write server. Mysql makes this possible and affordable if your app is small.
Have the main database server at the datacenter/central office. Put up small web/db servers at each location, with your app installed. You can even run them off a user computer if the remote location is not too big. Make the local database servers connect to the centralized database server as replication slaves. As changes come in to the centralized database, the slave servers will pull down the data and make it available locally. When the connection is unavailable, your app data is still at least available, if not up to date. When the connection is available, the database handles replicating all relevant data down.
Now all you have to do is make your app use two separate database handles: reading data it uses the local database, writing data it uses the central database.