I write old-school Windows Apps for small and medium sized businesses using EDB as my back-end database. I have multi-site users who replicate data between offices, and have instances of the data in the cloud (AWS) so travelling staff can also view it and work on it on Laptops. I use WebBroker to create static webpages outputting data from these systems to old-school read-only websites.

My customers now want limited functionality added so that users can undertake certain data-entry tasks on mobile phones.

This is a massive area, and I don't have too much experience, but I am planning to try to develop myself, as I think contracting others to do the work would be a nightmare ... I might be wrong about this, but I am a solo developer and have always gone this way!

I am trying to choose a sensible way to develop a mobile platform which can read/write data from EDB.

Options:
* Pure web: Create a website with read/write and just let users navigate to it.
* FMX: OK, but how do I do EDB data if I choose FMX? How complex is App installation on a phone?
* Other Delphi web-tools: TMS WebCore, Intraweb ... again, I am a bit unclear how I access EDB data if I choose these routes.

I would love suggestions, experience, recommendations from existing EDB users. What technologies are you using for this type of problem?

Hi,
I'm using Elevate Web Builder with satisfaction. Same EDB data for the Web and the desktop, same code and docs great quality.
Not a new build every week, however; but for committed EDB devs it's a life saver.
Alex

On 1/14/2022 6:43 AM, Adam Brett wrote:
> My customers now want limited functionality added so that users can undertake certain data-entry tasks on mobile phones.
>
> This is a massive area, and I don't have too much experience, but I am planning to try to develop myself, as I think contracting others to do the work would be a nightmare ... I might be wrong about this, but I am a solo developer and have always gone this way!
>
> I am trying to choose a sensible way to develop a mobile platform which can read/write data from EDB.
>
> Options:
>   * Pure web: Create a website with read/write and just let users navigate to it.
>   * FMX: OK, but how do I do EDB data if I choose FMX? How complex is App installation on a phone?
>   * Other Delphi web-tools: TMS WebCore, Intraweb ... again, I am a bit unclear how I access EDB data if I choose these routes.
>
> I would love suggestions, experience, recommendations from existing EDB users. What technologies are you using for this type of problem?

How complex would the UI be, how much back and forth data retrieval and
do you need to interact with device APIs (for example to send push
messages (notifications), set OS level reminders etc) ?

This is pretty general but start with pure web app since it gives you
really rapid developing ability and you can quickly iterate and figure
out what works and get feedback. Also no hassles deploying the app thru
app store and such.

They can also add the URL as "app" the mobile device launcher screen so
for mobile device it would look like an app (though is really just
running in single tab browser view).

In general to access EDB data you would need to build some for of back
end API. You could user your existing WebBroker to do that but it's
still bunch of work.

My suggestion is same as Alex - give Elevate Web Builder a try as it has
native EBD connectivity built in (Tim basically took care of the EDB Web
API)

Raul