Shortly before Open Text acquired Actuate I stood up an iHub F-Type server on Amazon so that people in my little company could have access to reports and information. Now that the acquision is completed Open Text has discontinued support and availability for F-Type and is directing users like me to full blown iHub which they make available free for 45 days (which they will, so they say, extend to 90 days) and afterwards it is a paid service and not affordable for me.
My question is...how are others providing for cloud based reporting for users in a way that is affordable? I am aware of this project that appears to offer something like what F-Type used to. Has anyone tried this ReportServer? Any thoughts or experiences you could share?
I am also open to other reporting platforms (Jasper, etc.) if they offer what I am after. This would be my least preferable option but my users wouldn't really know or care so I could do it if I needed to?
Download the latest BIRT Runtime Release Build (4.5.0), put the engine in a server, add scripts to run the reports you want.
http://download.eclipse.org/birt/downloads/build.php?build=R-R1-4_5_0-201506092134
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We have an existing cross-platform Mobile Application, that also has an accompanying web application, that uses AWS as a back end (RDS for Database, Four server instances, and a Load Balancer to distribute traffic). APK and IPA files are packaged and sent to the stores, while components are retrieved from our server per request, which enables us to reduce the number of store builds, and make the process easier for getting changes out to clients.
We are at the stage of Development that we need to move to another platform to better facilitate our fast growing client base.
Due to the conditions upon our clients, these things must be considered.
must be cross platform (Android / iOS).
must be offline based (users need to be able to access without an internet connection)
must be able to sync with an existing database when there is a connection
requires Authentication
Cloud based (? may not be the right term, but meaning the ability for us to store components on a server and have a device check for updates and download a local copy - enabling us to work and distribute fixes faster)
Ideally compatible with AWS
We are currently looking at Xamarin to facilitate us for this move, however there is a lot of documentation and plugins out there to do all sorts of different things.
As developers, we all have some .net / c# experience, however none particularly with Xamarin.
We have a particular timeline that we need to adhere to (and need to ramp up in the next couple of weeks), and right now are essentially stuck in Limbo in a research phase, as we can't afford to get some things right. We are unable to move forward until we know Xamarin (or some other framework) is able to do everything that we need it to do.
It's hard to escape from the 'code it all ourselves' mentality - especially as we don't know where to start looking in terms of third party packages for Xamarin, and their documentation itself.
A lot of documentation mentions various systems of Azure - we would not be against moving to Azure over AWS if it _had to be done*, but because of the existing infrastructure with AWS - staying with AWS is obviously the preferred option (users need to access the current system whilst we build the new system)
This stack overflow post is to ask for recommendations, comments, or other observations on anything and everything involved with the process in regards to choosing frameworks, design patterns, methodologies, third party packages, etc.
Obviously we would like to use best practises for everything moving forward for optimum scalability and cleaner, more robust code. It's just hard to know where to start!
Any input will be highly appreciated.
Cheers!
edit: I am aware that this is 'asking for recommendations' which is 'specifically off-topic'. I have read the posting guidelines about open ended discussion, and am quite confident that this case is different. There is an underlying problem here, in that we are seeking advice on combinations of frameworks and plugins that are fully compatible with all of the items in the list (above)
Let's try to breakdown each of your requirement and constraint mentioned in the question.
1. You need a offline first architecture (With Sync mechanism)
Xamarin + Azure would make a good comdo for you, as it would support offline storage out of box (With a simple PullAsync call).
Albeit there are AWS SDK available for Xamarin. Here it goes http://docs.aws.amazon.com/mobile/sdkforxamarin/developerguide/setup.html
So the call is yours. There are few other ways to achieve caching offline storage in Xamarin, you can build upon those strategy in your logic. Alternatively there is a very interesting C# library Akavache for caching and offline storage.
2. OAuth 2.0 Authentication
Xamarin has a very good library named Xamarin.Auth. Though I would not say it is very easily extendible at this but there has been some serious work going on from Xamarin on this library.
But I would say it is very easy to use. The apps I have developed so far that includes - Google OAuth, Facebook integration, Microsoft account integration. It worked fine for all of them.
3. Cloud based distribution
There are nice tools available with Microsoft. Which makes the distribution easy. Have a look at https://mobile.azure.com . Also hockeyApp is good for distribution I found.
Where to start:
A very good starting point for you would be https://channel9.msdn.com . Just go there search with keyword "Xamarin" and view some videos. May be all these cross platform dynamics will be much easier for you.
Overall I found Xamarin a cool product to work with. Because anything that can be done in native Objective C/Swift or Java can very well be done in Xamarin using C#.
I have been researching OLAP servers such as Tableau, Jasper, BIRT iHub, etc.
but it appears that none of them provide reasonable support to customise the
user interface. All of them use the browser as the rendering system but
changing their default screens or "viewer" windows is not encouraged
(possible?).
I DO NOT want to write a full fledged J2EE application and drop JAR files
in the WAR. I have done it in the past and was expecting improved support
for this type of requirements.
Any pointers?
Thanks for the additional info.
May be the Swiss tool, icCube, can help you. icCube ships with an in-memory OLAP engine and built in web reporting application. You can embed the software seamless in other web applications, so adjusting the look-and-feel and customer branding is relatively simple.
As the reseller of icCube in The Netherlands, I have implemented icCube at several clients that were looking for an affordable dashboard solution that could completely blend into their product. Based on our customers' enthusiasm I think I can say we succeeded in that.
You can view some live demo's on our website. Also tons of info is available at icCube´s site. If you want more, I can show you some embedded examples through skype if you want to.
Hope this has helped.
I'm aware this isn't exactly a programming question, but it directly impacts our developers and the code we're assigned to write. If there's another SO-like forum where this could be better posted, please let me know and I'll take the question down from here & post it there.
Our work environment is a couple of developers creating (20-30%) and maintaining (lion's share) legacy software for factory production floor and test workers to use to calibrate or test the equipment the company sells. We've implemented a very simple Google form based bug reporting page, but we're already running into problems of scale (approx 40:1 them:us and lots of old-old buggy software that we didn't write). The company has tried using Bugzilla before my arrival with little success, the factory folks were apparently intimidated by it and wouldn't use it. However, they seem to like the simple Google form and the wizard-like steps to file a bug or request a feature. We're currently manually cutting & pasting their bug/feature requests from the Google form spreadsheet into Trac, and manually tracking the bugs/feature requests on a white board with magnetic bug cards. We're only a few weeks into this system and it's already showing it fragility and lack of scalability.
Ideally we'd have a Windows >= XP web or desktop client that would provide:
Simplified bug reporting, a Wizard like approach seems to work well
Customizable for our software packages (like drop downs for each)
Bugzilla or Trac integration
Standard bug tracking features developers and management can use
I've found the winners of the "Make Bugzilla Pretty" contest, but coming from a pure software house where we just used straight Bugzilla out of the box, I'm unclear on how to configure and install these skins. Obviously I can figure this out but don't want to go down that path if it's not going to solve our basic problem which is non-technical people reporting bugs.
TaskCompiler, found on the Bugzilla wiki site seemed like a candidate because it talks to both Bugzilla & Trac, but their sales page is offline and the site hasn't been updated since 2012 and I'm unsure as to their viability.
I'm certain we're not the first production facility to run into problems like this, I'm looking for recommendations to help solve both our scalability as well as-ease-of-use problem.
Another thought that occurs to me is a GAS script to push our current Google forms based bug reports into Trac or Bugzilla.
Edit: The decision between Bugzilla/Trac seems to have been made for us. I'm exploring options for using Trac here if you want to follow along.
I have a certain online application that generates reports(and prints them) based on some repository of information. Now I would like to make an offline application which is provides the same experience and in which the repository is pre-loaded into the users' computer. What is the best way to convert this online app to offline app. The first thing that came to my mind was setup a local server and database. This ensures the experience is consistent. But I'm open to other options, such as storing the data in a file system and then loading it via flash/flex based apps or C# or Java. The objective of this offline app is to provide the functionality(report generation) to users where internet is not feasible.
I am not sure about the windows aspect of your question, but if I was doing an offline web based page(s) I would be looking at a LocalStorage database (though it does have some downsides), but there are other alternatives such as WebSQL and IndexedDB.
If you have reports, do they still have value when they are out of date? Do you need to store the configuration of those reports or is it all just read only?
Shameless self promotion, I have a project that is designed to handle database synchronization, though it's not done, it's close. You can see it (with an ugly but very functional) demo at https://github.com/forbesmyester/SyncIt
The team I'm working with have created a CRM4 add-on which encapsulates 'standard' CRM customisations (such as modifying existing entities, adding our own custom entities), reports, plug-ins, and our own web pages (in IFrames) and web services. All pretty typical stuff.
I'm writing all the requisite installation code to simplify / automate the install process so that our ISV add-on can downloaded and trialled by anyone, but have been asked to think of appropriate way restrict functionality - to encourage people to purchase a license.
I'm not that familiar with the concepts/best practices/pitfalls when it comes to the 'licensing' of .net apps (especially CRM4 add-ons) so am asking you if you have any suggestions. We're looking for something fairly simple, and should be reasonably 'crackable', since we believe that having to enter a license code is generally a PITA.
Does the CRM API have anything to offer the ISV developer? (I see that one is able to nterrogate the License entity, but I'm assuming that this is for the CRM license itself)
Are there any existing code samples / projects / frameworks that are appropriate to use or implement?
I'm tempted to create a Registry Key upon installation of the add-on which, if after a month the correct license key has not been entered, will restrict functionality. Is this the best way to do this? Have you seen any other add-ons do it differently / better?
In terms of restricting functionality, I'm thinking of throwing InvalidPluginExecutionExceptions. Surely there must be a more 'graceful' way to do this?
All thoughts and suggestions appreciated.
Regards,
Peter.
My thoughts:
Yes, you can query the License entity to get the number of licensed users, which is a common license type from what I've seen. Lots of 3rd party vendors charge by the number of licensed users, regardless of how many of those users actually use the customization. I try to stay away from these because the license costs are often prohibitive for enterprise deployments.
Not that I know of.
I like this option, and have seen at least one 3rd party tool use this method. They allow you to declare the license key in your .config file, and if their runtime doesn't find it there it checks a known registry key. The tool comes with an app that registers the license key in the registry for you. I'd be careful to test and make sure your custom code can read the registry in a least-privilege environment.
Definitely not graceful to throw exceptions, but it does prove your point. :) Other than that, just outright skipping your code is another possibility, although that could have data implications. If you must throw exceptions, I would suggest trying to run some javascript on form load of your entities that warns the user that their license is expired and a save will result in an error. Some more nefarious schemes could include Thread.Sleep, kinda like the old shareware nagscreens. :)
Another idea - can you set up an Enterprise IFD deployment so you can give customers remote access to your demo, including their own demo organization? This depends on your audience, but your customers may not have the luxury (time, dev environment) of downloading and installing your trial. They may just want to see it in action - once you qualify the sale maybe you offer free remote installation and not spend so much time on a flawless setup package? Again, depends on your audience and the volume of licenses you expect to sell. Technically, you could dynamically provision organizations using the SDK and make the online trial process completely automatic. Of course this is a big investment, but allows you to maintain absolute control over your demo/IP.
Hope that helps!