Originally coined by analyst firm Gartner, RMAD (rapid mobile application development) isn’t just a hot acronym in app development for 2024 – it’s an absolute necessity. Waiting six to eight months for an app ensures that it will be completely obsolete once it’s finally ready for prime time: requirements will change, another app will fill the niche, or end users will already be entrenched with another solution.
In addition, a traditional, non-RMAD approach assumes you have a team of mobile developers ready to tackle the project, and for many businesses, hiring experienced app developers is a lengthy, expensive process. Outsourcing your app development work that well, either. Many have tried, but few have succeeded in getting third-parties to realize the original vision of the app, on time, and while ensuring the integrity of their intellectual property rights.
Luckily, with the increasing prevalence of RMAD tools, developing a sophisticated, full-featured app in a week or two – and with your existing tech team – is suddenly a reality. Of course, not all RMAD tools are created equal. Let’s take a look at the five top requirements you should demand in an RMAD solution.
Read more…
Programming Techniques for Mobile Development
MobileTogether is an easy to use, low-code app development framework that lets you create sophisticated apps for all platforms from a single design.
Low-code doesn’t mean no code. A database specialist might start with a few SQL queries and use the MobileTogether drag and drop interface to create an app with elegant tables and graphs to report up-to-the-minute enterprise data, while experienced developers often use familiar programming techniques in mobile development to build highly complex, elegant MobileTogether solutions.
Developers define user functions, parameters, variables, loops, or a complex data structure when that’s the right tool for the job. MobileTogether makes it fast and easy to control all the features in the device – camera, microphone, GPS, SMS, handwriting capture, and more. MobileTogether helps you achieve your vision fast and build really cool mobile apps with charisma enough to go viral.
MobileTogether is about getting the work done efficiently, not limiting how you do it. Let’s check out a couple examples of programming techniques in MobileTogether apps.
Get to Know Your Favorite XML Editor Again [Video]
For more than a decade XMLSpy has been a leading choice for all things XML. But over the years we’ve broadened the scope by adding hundreds of new features, supported standards, and innovative tools to make development faster and easier.
This new overview video offers a quick, high-level look at the various tools and options available, including functionality for JSON, XPath/XQuery, HTTP testing, debugging, back-mapping, and more.
Check out the XMLSpy demos page for more videos and in-depth tutorials on the JSON Grid Editor, XPath and XSLT for JSON, comparing XML files, and more.
Get access to all these features by upgrading to the latest version of XMLSpy or downloading a free, 30-day trial.
Web Service Data Integration
In a previous post we wrote that every data integration and reporting task needs to start with a clear understanding of the source data. Using grid view in XMLSpy, the industry-leading XML and JSON editor, we analyzed JSON data for 5-day weather forecasts retrieved from a Web service.
Continuing with our earlier scenario, we’ll use MapForce, the award-winning, graphical data mapping tool for any-to-any conversion and integration, to map the forecasts for a series of major cargo shipping ports into nicely formatted Excel documents. We’ll want to highlight any predicted high winds or heavy rainfall that could cause delays by interfering with cranes loading and unloading containers, or slowing ships entering and exiting the harbors.
Teaching your child to code in the age of remote learning
Interested in finding something worthwhile and entertaining to teach your children for free while they are participating in remote learning at home? Why not teach them about computer programming. This is a skill that will serve them well in life no matter what path they take.
Build Advanced XML Reports with New XPath Debugger
Altova StyleVision is a unique, easy-to-use tool for creating business reports using a drag-and-drop visual design interface. StyleVision lets you build reports for XML as well as database and XBRL sources. Each design you create can be automated for recurring reporting to HTML, PDF and Word, either using the auto-generated XSLT stylesheet or via StyleVision Server.
Integral to XSLT stylesheet design is XPath for selecting and calculating data, as well as defining styling rules, in your report. New features added to StyleVision include an XPath debugger that makes testing and perfecting your report easier than ever. Let’s see how it works.
New Tools to Work with XBRL in Excel
With the importance of accurate, standardized financial reporting enforced through XBRL filing mandates, having XBRL tools you can rely on is a must. What’s more, financial professionals need to be able to generate XBRL reports easily without getting bogged down by the complexities of XBRL syntax.
Altova offers several add-ins for Excel that make it easy for organizations to comply with regulations from the EBA, EIOPA, and other regulatory bodies that mandate reporting in XBRL. These easy-to-use software products integrate directly into Excel so that users can create valid XBRL reports in an environment where they’re already comfortable working. And, the add-ins support importing existing XBRL reports to Excel for easy readability and analysis.
The latest release of the Altova XBRL Add-ins for Excel provides some important new features – let’s take a look.
New Data Integration Tools
Altova MissionKit tools offer numerous ways to connect to, query, and integrate data from disparate sources. With multiple product releases each year, we’re constantly working to deliver increased power and efficiency for data integration, while adding features requested by customers. This includes ongoing updates to built-in support for all major SQL databases across the product line.
Let’s take a look at some of the recently added tools and enhancements.
New Tools for XML and JSON Editing
The latest release of XMLSpy adds several user-requested features for working with JSON and XML, as well as new functionality for debugging XPath, updated standards and database support, and more.
How to Convert Legacy Text Files [Video]
It’s a common requirement to convert non-standard or legacy text files to or from structured data formats like XML, JSON, and relational databases. However, many times legacy text files are not in a format that can be readily processed by data mapping tools, especially when they have a complex and unique structure that does not consistently fit into CSV or fixed-length field patterns. Moreover, sometimes you need to extract only portions of useful data from a legacy text file.
MapForce, Altova’s any-to-any data conversion tool, includes a unique utility called FlexText that makes it easy to visually define templates for parsing text files and making them accessible to the data mapping tool.
See how FlexText works in our video tutorial.
The example files referenced in the video are available here and you can try FlexText with a free, 30-day trial of MapForce.
Data Mapping JSON Lines
The JSON data format continues to evolve as an open standard as it is creatively applied to new data interchange requirements. JSON Lines, defined at http://jsonlines.org/, is a convenient text format for storing structured data where each record is a single line and a valid JSON object. JSON Lines handles tabular data and clearly identifies data types without ambiguity. This allows records to be processed one at a time, which makes the format very useful for exporting and sending data.
Altova MapForce supports data mapping JSON Lines as either a data source or target. Let’s look at a mapping project to extract records from a database table and map to a JSON Lines file for output.
How to Create Fillable PDF Forms
Compared to traditional paper forms, fillable PDF forms offer numerous benefits – aside from saving trees – including removing issues with legibility, allowing data validation, reducing re-keying errors, and streamlining information storage and re-use.
I, for one, really wish my kids’ school would switch to PDF forms for the myriad back-to-school information pages that we fill out in triplicate every fall. Perhaps I can give the administrators a demo of StyleVision, which just added support for fillable PDF form creation.
Unlike other PDF form design tools, however, StyleVision also provides form workflow functionality via integration with StyleVision Server for extracting and processing the data that end users enter. Let’s take a look at how it works.
Read more…
Software Design Templates in Mobile Development Projects
Software design templates streamline mobile app development by eliminating implementation of repetitive components. Creating a design template also simplifies revisions and upgrades when a change to the template can roll through an entire project.
MobileTogether supports software design templates for user controls in cross-platform mobile apps to facilitate design reuse and make it easy to build efficient, flexible options for various app requirements.
A Control Template in MobileTogether is a design component that allows developers to specify and group user controls in a way that makes them easily reusable. Control Templates support parameters, and each template can be customized based on parameter values at runtime.
Let’s look at an example.
Embedding Images in XML
One of the really cool features added to XMLSpy a few years ago based on customer requests is the ability to embed external files – such as images – directly in an XML document as encoded text. This gives you the option to package all required data from various external files together in one large XML document. The functionality is also available for embedding images in JSON documents.
Let’s take a look at how easy it is to accomplish this in the XML and JSON editor in just a few steps.
Read more…
CbC Reporting Made Easy
A recent mandate from the OECD called on large, multinational companies to report financials annually for each country in which they do business to their local tax authority. The OECD specified that this detailed Country by Country (CbC) Report be filed in an XML document according to their reporting schema. But for tax departments that work largely in Excel or other accounting software, this presented a significant stumbling block – and companies found themselves scrambling to meet the requirements by the deadline.
What was needed is a way to automatically generate valid, properly formatted CbC XML reports based on existing data. Altova created the Country by Country Reporting Solution to do just that, either based on manually entered data or figures imported directly from Excel. Let’s take a look at how it works.
Read more…
Transitioning Data Mapping Projects from Development through Testing and Production
Data mapping projects often mirror software development efforts with distinct phases for design, testing, and deployment. This is especially true for ETL (Extract Transform Load) projects when repeated data mapping execution is required as new data becomes available, and the stakes increase higher with large data sets. The Altova MissionKit and Server Software products provide Global Resources to define configurations for each project phase and smoothly transition between them.
Let’s take a look at an example based on a MapForce data mapping from a source file to a database.
Accelerate Low Code App Development with MobileTogether 6.0
With the right tools, a low code approach to development doesn’t mean a sacrifice of functionality or sophistication of the end result. On the contrary, low code app development frameworks like MobileTogether make advanced programming functionality more accessible and faster to implement.
Whether you’re building apps for iOS, Android, Windows, the web – or all of the above – the latest release of MobileTogether adds a mix of features that elevate programming on the platform to the next level and give developers easy access to the latest mobile device trends.
Version 2020 Revolutionizes JSON Editing
We’re introducing several exciting new tools for JSON development in Altova Software Version 2020, but there’s much more too. Support for the XULE XBRL standard, comparing CSV against database content, and updated database support are just a few of the new features introduced across the product line.
Let’s take a look at the highlights.
Build Custom Maps in Mobile Apps
In an earlier post we described how to integrate maps into cross-platform mobile apps with each end-user device’s native map application. Our example app generated a map with pins locating major airports in the United States. Illustrations showed maps generated by the same app on an Android phone, an iPhone, and Windows desktop.
What if a list of locations to be mapped is not known in advance, but generated based on user activity at run-time? MobileTogether, the low-code cross-platform mobile development tool from Altova, also empowers developers to build custom maps in mobile apps on the fly based on a list of geolocations generated at run time.
UML Modeling for C++ with UModel
C++ is one of the most powerful and efficient programming languages available, the de facto choice for high-performance computing, server applications, and complex architectures that demand the most powerful language constructs. The Unified Modeling Language™ (UML®) is the standard to design, visualize, and document models of software systems implemented in C++ and other source code languages.
Altova UModel competes with even the most advanced UML modeling tools with complete code engineering support in UML modeling for C++. UModel includes: C++ code generation from UML diagrams, reverse engineering C++ code to generate UML models, and round-trip engineering to update revisions to either C++ code and UML models.
Model transformation even lets developers convert an existing UML model designed for Java, C#, or Visual Basic to support C++.
Read more…
Handle HTTP Errors During Automated Data Integration
Data analysts and other professionals often need to generate real-time data through automated execution of data mappings that request Web services and save the results. During automated execution it’s important to gracefully handle any unexpected HTTP error rather than terminate the integration task.
In an earlier post we discussed conditional processing of a REST Web service response to handle HTTP errors, where separate output files were generated for a normal response and an error. Now let’s look at a revised mapping solution for the airport status example to generate a single mapping result file that contains either the requested airport status or a description of the error.
Top 5 Requirements for RMAD Tools
Originally coined by analyst firm Gartner, RMAD (rapid mobile application development) isn’t just a hot acronym in app development for 2024 – it’s an absolute necessity. Waiting six to eight months for an app ensures that it will be completely obsolete once it’s finally ready for prime time: requirements will change, another app will fill the niche, or end users will already be entrenched with another solution.
In addition, a traditional, non-RMAD approach assumes you have a team of mobile developers ready to tackle the project, and for many businesses, hiring experienced app developers is a lengthy, expensive process. Outsourcing your app development work that well, either. Many have tried, but few have succeeded in getting third-parties to realize the original vision of the app, on time, and while ensuring the integrity of their intellectual property rights.
Luckily, with the increasing prevalence of RMAD tools, developing a sophisticated, full-featured app in a week or two – and with your existing tech team – is suddenly a reality. Of course, not all RMAD tools are created equal. Let’s take a look at the five top requirements you should demand in an RMAD solution.
Read more…
Integrate Maps into Mobile Apps
Developers can create highly-customized location-based apps by leveraging geolocation functionality in mobile devices. Now MobileTogether, the cross-platform, low-code mobile development tool from Altova, supports deep integration of maps into applications for all popular mobile platforms.
Developers can integrate maps into mobile apps, add dedicated markers, and define custom actions based on user clicks on the map. For instance, an enterprise might want an app to include a map of all branch office locations, then display the current inventory when an office is clicked.
In a previous post we described a mobile app designed to let users check the status of major US airports by selecting an airport code from a combo box. An alternate technique would be to replace the 47 combo-box entries with pins on a map.
Let’s look at this example.
Web Service Error Handling in Mobile Apps
Mobile phones bring a world of information to our fingertips, but functionality of even the best-designed mobile apps can be impacted by Web service errors that occur when communicating with external servers. Intermittent cell phone service in remote locations can also degrade app performance when looking up data.
MobileTogether, the low-code, cross-platform mobile app development tool from Altova, includes features that let developers gracefully handle Web service errors in mobile apps to avoid burdening end-users with unexpected app interruptions or cryptic error messages.
In an earlier post we explained HTTP error handling in a MapForce data mapping. Now we’ll look at the same Web service in a mobile app and describe error handling in MobileTogether.
How to Manage GDPR Compliance [Video]
The General Data Protection Regulation, better known as the GDPR, is a set of privacy and data protection rules applying to organizations that process personal data of people residing in either the European Union or European Economic Area. It was built to comply with legislation that went into effect on May 25, 2018 and provides individuals more control of their personal data. The GDPR simplifies the regulatory environment for international business by providing a common set of standards for all businesses working in the EU.
The GDPR requires that data production measures be built into the design of business processes that collect personal data. If a breach occurs, information about this breach must be reported to the supervisory authority. Altova has created the GDPR Compliance Database, a tool that simplifies the storage and access of metadata related to company processes that touch personal data.
The Altova GDPR Compliance Database is a long-term solution for companies looking for a permanent solution to GDPR compliance. It enables companies to respond quickly to any incidents and contains built in mechanisms for change tracking, ensuring compliance measures are well documented.
The video above provides a high-level overview of all the features contained in the Altova GDPR Database.
Learn more about the Altova GDPR Compliance Database and try it free for 30 days.
Handling HTTP Errors in Web Service Data Mappings
Data integration projects that include information from external Web services may be vulnerable to HTTP errors when retrieving remote data. When data mappings run under automated control it’s especially important to detect and report errors even if errors only occur very rarely.
A MapForce data mapping can include Web service calls and output the result directly to a file or database, or combine it with other inputs for further processing. Regardless of the final output, an HTTP Web service error encountered in a REST Web service request puts the mapping at risk.
MapForce includes features for handling HTTP errors instead of simply aborting execution of a mapping. Developers can configure the body of a REST Web service call to handle and report exceptions based on the HTTP status code returned.
Let’s look at an example.
Build Apps with Maps and Video
The latest release of the MobileTogether app development framework adds additional support for defining geolocation and video integration in your apps for iOS, Android, Windows, and other platforms.
Let’s take a look at how these new features enhance existing map and video tools in MobileTogether.
Database Mapping with Database Exception Handling
Critical business processes depend on reliable data and database administrators and other data analysts want to be confident in the integrity of information stored in database tables. During automated ETL (Extract Transform Load) operations or other database import tasks, invalid data might be encountered that jeopardizes success of the procedure. Altova MapForce includes database exception handling to roll back the affected data when an error occurs and optionally proceed with the rest of a database mapping.
For instance, an error in a single record need not prevent execution of a mapping from continuing, such as when certain database constraints prevent the mapping from inserting or updating invalid data.
How to Generate CbC Correction Reports
Altova’s Country by Country (CbC) Reporting Solution makes it easy for multi-national companies to generate valid XML reports to meet the filing requirements mandated by the OECD. Now, in Version 2.0, the CbC Reporting Solution includes new functionality for generating correction reports, as well as the ability to import existing reports for easy analysis.
Let’s take a look at how these new tools make it even easier for customers to meet filing requirements without having to deal with the underlying CbCR XML syntax.
Database Tracing to Log Changes Made by a Data Mapping Project
Database administrators and other data professionals often want to maintain a record of changes in critical databases, especially when updates are made by automated scripts or other operations. Database tracing lets administrators track critical changes or anomalies, and help recover from errors. Altova MapForce supports database tracing for all popular relational databases to log the changes made by a data mapping project to the database when the mapping runs.
When tracing is enabled, events such as database insert or update actions, or errors, are logged in an XML file that you can later analyze or process further in an automated way.
Database tracing can be enabled at the database component, table, stored procedure, or database field level. You can choose to trace all messages or only errors, or you can disable tracing completely.
In addition to tracing errors that occur during the execution of a mapping to a target database, MapForce also enables database transaction handling to roll back the affected part of the database data when an error occurs, then optionally proceed with the rest of the mapping.
Read more…Visual Feedback in Mobile Applications
Visual feedback in mobile applications provides a more enjoyable user experience, and mobile apps that are fun to use get launched more frequently than static, boring apps. MobileTogether, the rapid mobile app development (RMAD) framework from Altova, incorporates all the tools you need to develop cross-platform mobile apps with attractive visual feedback features.
The drag-and-drop controls palette in the MobileTogether Designer includes a button control that automatically changes its appearance when clicked. You can also define conditions that add or change text, images, or other features of any button as the app executes.
Additionally, many other controls can also be defined to act like buttons, where one or more actions are performed when the control is clicked. We have written previously about applying icon images as tool buttons in mobile apps to create a stylish and elegant menu of tools. In this post we will add interactivity to our tool images to provide attractive visual feedback for each click.
Updated JSON Schema Support Highlights v2019 Release 3
From updated support for standards and relational databases to several new data mapping options, Altova’s Version 2019 Release 3 product line addresses developer requests and ups the ante with innovative new functionality. Let’s take a look at the highlights.
Automatic Link Detection for Mobile Apps
Integration between a mobile app and the vast information resources of world wide web makes the user experience more convenient and responsive, especially when targeted web content may be frequently updated.
The latest release of MobileTogether, Altova’s low-code, cross-platform mobile development framework, includes support for automatic link detection of URLs and email addresses in labels. Clicking or tapping the link opens the targeted website page in a browser window or as a new draft message in the device’s email app in a new window without quitting the mobile app. No further special coding required by the developer.
Let’s see how it works.
Read more…Automate Word Document Comparison in Busy Enterprises
Many enterprises and business situations leverage Microsoft Word documents in standardized formats, with variations in content in subsequent versions. Think of contracts or other legal documents, status reports, test results, lists of rules, and many others. These documents may even be generated through automated processes. Manually identifying and reporting changes between versions would be a cumbersome process. Altova DiffDog Server provides an efficient, automated solution.
DiffDog Server brings the file and directory comparison power of Altova DiffDog to high-performance servers, making it easy to automate Word document comparison and generate diff reports comparing files, directories, or URLs, and even Word documents (.docx) saved in MS Office versions 2007 or later.
Let’s look at a Word document comparison.
Enabling Let’s Encrypt in MobileTogether
MobileTogether Server, the backend hub for apps built in MobileTogether Designer, now supports the ability obtain SSL certificates using Let’s Encrypt. Let’s Encrypt is a free service aimed at encrypting all HTTP traffic on the web. This feature is supported in MobileTogether Server starting with version 5.1 and adds to the ability to upload your own certificate.
The video tutorial above walks you through configuring MobileTogether Server to utilize SSL encryption when communicating with MobileTogether clients. It covers the use of both Let’s Encrypt and certificates generated using a trusted certificate authority.
SSL certificates generated using a trusted certificate authority can be uploaded directly to MobileTogether Server. This configuration can provide several advantages to system administrators. These types of certificates are typically good for a much longer period of time, requiring fewer maintenance windows. In addition, you can keep your MobileTogether Server completely isolated from the outside world as this method does not require any external ports to be opened. The process to obtain these certificates can be much more complex and expensive. Verification typically requires you to provide information to the issuer and wait for a response which can delay your implementation.
Let’s Encrypt integration was added in MobileTogether 5.1. Let’s Encrypt is a certificate authority whose goal is to provide encryption to the entire Internet. Certificates generated are free of charge. Unlike other methods of generation, though, Let’s Encrypt certificates are only good for 90 days. MobileTogether Server is capable of automatically renewing these certificates every 60 days, but requires a scheduled server reboot each time this action occurs. Lastly, Let’s Encrypt requires your server to be accessible from the outside world; they will need to communicate with MobileTogether Server on port 80 to verify your server’s identity.
The ability to encrypt communication between client and server is becoming ubiquitous. MobileTogether allows you to easily secure all communication to your mobile clients using SSL encryption and new support for Let’s Encrypt greatly reduces the set up complexity.
Simplified Security Options & More in MobileTogether 5.1
The latest release of MobileTogether, Altova’s low-code, cross platform mobile app development framework, offers a simplified method for requesting and implementing SSL certificates by utilizing Let’s Encrypt integration. Now, developers can secure communications between the backend server and user devices quickly, seamlessly, and for free.
Other updates include support for the latest versions of Android and multiple new options for flexible app development. Let’s take a look.
Flexible Collection Curation with MyCollections 4.0
MyCollections, the easy-to-use app for cataloging and sharing your collections, has been updated with flexible new tools for customizing the way your published collections are displayed.
Whether you’re using the MyCollections app for iOS, Android, Windows, or the web, the new options in MyCollections 4.0 make it even easier to show off your collections exactly as you’d like to.
How Low-Code Can Solve the Developer Shortage
The shortage of software developers in recent years is hardly news – and it’s not getting any better. A recent study arrived at a stunning revelation: software developers are now more valuable to companies than money.
Let’s take a look at some of the factors contributing to the problem – as well as how the emergence of low code tools is helping to solve it in a few surprising ways.
Configuring MobileTogether Server & LicenseServer
Part of the Altova MobileTogether framework, MobileTogetherServer is the back-end hub that powers your native apps for Android, iOS, Windows, and the web. The server provides high performance data processing, comprehensive caching, instant deployment of apps, and more.
Every developer looking to install MobileTogether Server will also need to obtain a copy of Altova LicenseServer. LicenseServer is a free product that simplifies license management for all Altova products, including MobileTogether Server. Licenses are managed via an easy-to-use web-based administrator console.
The video tutorial below will walk developers through the steps needed to install both MobileTogether Server and LicenseServer. It covers obtaining and running the installer followed by a basic configuration that will have you deploying enterprise apps in under an hour. This video is the first part in a short series that will eventually discuss SSL Certificate deployment, network configuration, and deploying apps to each of the app stores.
If you’re new to MobileTogether and would like to learn more about developing mobile apps, please head over to the MobileTogether Demos page where we have a collection of video tutorials.
Job Distribution on FlowForce Server
FlowForce Server is Altova’s high-performance engine for automating workflows of XML processing, data integration, report generation, and more. It integrates with other Altova server software products to automate their functions, such as executing complex data integration processes, including ETL projects, designed in MapForce; running StyleVision report generation jobs; or validating XML, XBRL, or JSON files with RaptorXML Server.
Starting with Version 2019, FlowForce Server offers new options for distributed execution and load balancing to improve availability and performance. Let’s take a look at how configuring multiple FlowForce Servers to run as a cluster can help improve data throughput and provide redundancy.
Read more…
Solvency II XBRL without the Headache
Solvency II regulations in the European Union require periodic reports to be submitted in XBRL format by companies in the insurance industry. This can present a considerable challenge to workers unfamiliar with technical XBRL syntax.
Altova created an easy way to take data directly from Excel to generate reports based on the Solvency II XBRL taxonomy, completely shielding end users from the complexity of XBRL syntax.
Let’s take a look at what the Solvency II regulations mean to impacted companies and how the Altova Solvency II add-in for Excel makes it easy to generate valid reports for filing.
Read more…
Design and Refine your Apps with MobileTogether 5.0
In its latest release, the MobileTogether app development framework adds several new features for building native mobile apps and enterprise solutions, including a totally rewritten web client, numerous new UI design options, powerful new Actions and functions, and much more.
Whether it’s refining the look and feel of your app’s UI or designing sophisticated app behavior, MobileTogether 5.0 adds numerous tools that make it easy.
Let’s take a look.
Read more…
Implementing Basic Filtering in Your App
There are numerous ways to implement searching and filtering within mobile apps. MobileTogether Designer allows developers to perform filtering on either your mobile app or on the server via a SQL query. Knowledge of each of these methods, along with the use cases for them, is an essential tool every mobile developer should possess.
This video tutorial continues to build out the books database project that has been constructed in previous tutorials. It will cover the steps needed to implement basic filtering in your mobile app. Additionally, it also introduces developers to the usage of user defined XQuery functions which provide a method to centralize application logic.
If you’re new to MobileTogether Designer, please take a moment to view the MobileTogether Demos page where we have provided links to additional video tutorials and demo apps.
Get Sharp with Altova’s Latest Release
Altova Software Version 2019 introduces over 20 new features to help you sharpen your development game – starting with support for high-res monitors in both XMLSpy and UModel. There are also tools for working with new standards and database versions across the product line, the ability to map and convert data in Google Protocol Buffers format, and much more. Let’s take a look at the highlights.
Read more…
Images, Icons, and Tool Buttons in Mobile Apps
We have written previously about Integrating APIs and Mobile Apps to create a rich and entertaining user experience. Since publishing our previous post, we continued to enhance the GPS demo app with additional API support to get current weather conditions and scheduled events nearby.
One challenge with offering all this functionality on a small mobile screen is to provide users with a clear, consistent, and easy to use navigation scheme across all views in the app.
Applying icon images as tool buttons in mobile apps can create a stylish and graceful navigation menu, especially if the icons are chosen based on recognizable and commonly-agreed conventions. For instance, an arrow pointing left often indicates go back, and a floppy disk icon frequently represents save data, even when the ultimate destination might not be a new file nor a disk.
In this post we will describe how to use image icons to build cross-platform navigation menus with tool buttons in mobile apps using MobileTogether.
Read more…
Integrating APIs and Mobile Apps
Busy mobile users on the go prefer apps that are convenient and efficient. MobileTogether provides developers with features to seamlessly integrate APIs and mobile apps to combine mobile device functionality with up-to-date information from external sources. This empowers developers to create custom cross-platform native apps that provide a rich and entertaining end-user experience.
Public APIs are a great source of external data to enhance almost any custom mobile app. Developers can combine information from multiple APIs to provide users with better information, faster, in an elegant, integrated package.
APIs are available for almost any kind of information your mobile app may need, from flight tracking to commodity or stock prices to tropical storm tracking.
In this post we’ll look at a GPS app that starts with mobile device geolocation functionality to answer the basic question, “Where am I?” then interfaces with APIs from Google and MapQuest to add a wealth of additional information. We’ll integrate a spatially-aware search engine to locate nearby points of interest as near as a quarter mile radius, all the way to pin-pointing the user’s location in a satellite photograph with a wide-angle view of an entire continent or more.
Read more…
Early Software Testing Validates Design
“Test early and often,” is a strategy from agile software engineering that has evolved to become a mandate for software developers in every field. Early software testing is especially important for developers working on cross-platform apps, who must support mobile devices with varying physical characteristics and operating system functionalities.
MobileTogether includes features to incorporate early software testing into the development process without time-consuming compile, deploy, and debug cycles for each mobile platform. The Altova Web site describes the MobileTogether Simulator early software testing feature, and we have blogged about the ability to record and re-run specific sets of actions in test cases.
This post describes Trial Run on Client. It’s built into the MobileTogether Designer to let developers instantly examine app designs and validate logic and functionality across any supported mobile device or platform – Android, iOS, and Windows Desktop or Windows Phone.
Read more…
Steps and Tips to Migrate a Windows MobileTogether Server to Linux
The MobileTogether app development framework includes MobileTogether Server, the back-end hub that powers your mobile and desktop apps. Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, MobileTogether Server acts as a gateway between end-users and back-end data sources such as databases.
Migrating an existing Windows MobileTogether Server to an Ubuntu box is easy when no database connections are required. But, if you have database connections, MobileTogether Designer can do all the heavy lifting for you.
As an IT administrator who works with physical and virtual hardware as well as desktop and server software, it has made life easier to create many scripts to help manage repetitive tasks. Though I’m more of a ‘citizen developer’ with no formal developer training, using MobileTogether Designer to migrate a server with database connections was fast and easy. Below is a look at how I was able to save my company the cost of a Windows server license by moving solutions to an Ubuntu platform.
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Node Functions Simplify Mapping Hierarchical Data Structures
MapForce node functions simplify mapping hierarchical data such as XML nodes or CSV, JSON, EDI, or database fields by permitting users to define a data processing function at the node level and apply it recursively to all descendant items.
Similarly, default values can also be assigned to nodes and automatically applied to descendants.
Defaults and node functions are particularly useful when a data mapping and transformation task requires the same processing logic for multiple descendant items in a structure, for example:
Defaults and node functions simplify mapping hierarchical data by eliminating need to copy-paste the same function multiple times into a mapping. Repeating the same function unnecessarily clutters the mapping layout and makes it more difficult to understand or revise.
Let’s look at an example.
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How to Speed Up Your XSLT – Automatically
Once you’ve written XSLT code to produce HTML or some other output, optimizing it to deliver the fastest execution is tricky business. Even with the powerful XSLT profiler in XMLSpy, a developer is required to have expert-level XSLT skills to test and fix the bottlenecks that the XSLT profiler identifies. Is the problem in an XPath expression? Is it an XSLT instruction? This can be a frustrating and time consuming task.
To help alleviate this issue and bring the power of XSLT to developers of all skill levels, XMLSpy also includes the XSL Speed Optimizer, which provides fixes to remove bottlenecks automatically, to immediately speed up your XSLT execution – it’s a revolutionary approach to optimizing XSLT performance.
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The Only JSON Dev Tool You’ll Need
While XMLSpy might not be the first tool developers think of when they’ve got a JSON development task, XMLSpy includes comprehensive support for working with JSON, JSON Schema, and related technologies.
Over the past few product releases, we’ve added intelligent functionality for editing and converting JSON and JSON5 data to the product. We’ve completed the circle with one-click conversion between XML Schemas and JSON Schemas, as well as sample instance generation and JSON Schema documentation generation. And, most recently, we’ve added support for processing JSON with XSLT, XPath, and XQuery.
Let’s walk through some common examples demonstrating this functionality – and see how these time-saving tools make XMLSpy the only JSON development tool you’ll need.
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