> If you're not doing IOS/OSX, the reasoning to upgrade gets harder.

I can probably say this here, but I am going to use Elevate WebBuilder for my
mobile development. Very Delphi like, very productive and amazingly good. After the
next update I'm going to try to PhoneGap an app written with it. I think that it is
a better prospect for my purposes than the new Delphi.

/Matthew Jones/

Same here - FireMonkey is too proprietary IMHO (and to say unproven is
an understatement) and also i don't like the idea of graphics vs native
controls - keeping up with iOS and Android OS updates will be a challenge.

Our mobile apps will be from scratch anyways so counting on EWB as well
for cross-platform (and using Phonegap).

Raul



On 4/25/2013 2:02 PM, (Matthew Jones) wrote:
>> If you're not doing IOS/OSX, the reasoning to upgrade gets harder.
>
> I can probably say this here, but I am going to use Elevate WebBuilder for my
> mobile development. Very Delphi like, very productive and amazingly good. After the
> next update I'm going to try to PhoneGap an app written with it. I think that it is
> a better prospect for my purposes than the new Delphi.
>
> /Matthew Jones/
>

(Matthew Jones) wrote:

>> If you're not doing IOS/OSX, the reasoning to upgrade gets harder. <<

>I can probably say this here, but I am going to use Elevate WebBuilder for my
mobile development. Very Delphi like, very productive and amazingly good. After the
next update I'm going to try to PhoneGap an app written with it. I think that it is
a better prospect for my purposes than the new Delphi.<

What are you going to do for a local database on iOS (or Android) with PhoneGap? I was under the impression WebBuilder would communicate with a remote database on the webserver, and not a local database inside a sandbox. (I don't know enough about WebBuilder, but if you can get it to work with a local Sqlite database on an iOS app with PhoneGap, then great. I'd like to see it too. )

Barry

Barry,

<< What are you going to do for a local database on iOS (or Android) with
PhoneGap? I was under the impression WebBuilder would communicate with a
remote database on the webserver, and not a local database inside a sandbox.
(I don't know enough about WebBuilder, but if you can get it to work with a
local Sqlite database on an iOS app with PhoneGap, then great. I'd like to
see it too. ) >>

EWB has a primitive dataset capability that you can dump as JSON (in the
upcoming 1.02) and then store/load from local storage (HTML5) in the
browser.  You will also be able to do this with transactions, so you will be
able to save/restore the state of a database application.  There *are*
limits on storage sizes, however, so you don't want to do this with huge
databases, only the client's "view" of the database.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

For me, I'm just using the basic local storage for a few things like login
information. The data is all accessed via a REST or JSON service.

/Matthew Jones/

>For me, I'm just using the basic local storage for a few things like login
information. The data is all accessed via a REST or JSON service.<

Ok, so you're developing a web app, and not a local app that is running on iOS or Android that needs a real local database without an internet connection. Writing a web app will be definitely easier to achieve and won't need the horsepower of FM in XE4 with Sqlite or Interbase-Lite.

Barry

Basically, yes. I did have a lot of smarts on our desktop app, and I got it working
on XE2 with the power in the app. But I wasn't happy with XE4's result, so I
decided to move the smarts to the web service, and use the web/mobile version as a
plain UI. But there are two classes that prepare XML and stuff that I basically
just copied over to EWB - it was remarkably simple. I think it is quite capable of
doing smarter stuff. For a larger project I'd find the IDE more limiting - things
like having bookmarks would make it a lot better, but it is solid at the moment,
and that matters a lot. I am always amazed at what I can achieve with it.

/Matthew Jones/

<Basically, yes. I did have a lot of smarts on our desktop app, and I got it working
on XE2 with the power in the app. But I wasn't happy with XE4's result, >

Matthew,

Was this an iOS app you had running in XE2? (I assume you mean XE2 and not XE4)
What didn't you like about it XE2 if I may ask?

Barry

Yes, it was an iOS app. Worked well on both iPhone and iPad. I only took it to
proof of concept because I knew that XE3 would have a much better FireMonkey and
iOS support. I could wait a few months. When it didn't come out, it set me thinking
about what my options were, and after much soul searching I decided that the big
advantage Delphi gave me was a single source code and multiple target UI. I then
used XE3 to do a Mac version, but wasn't happy with the way it was working out for
me. When XE4 broke the source compatibility, and how it turned out with existing
issues that I can't talk about as I was on the beta (I'm only allowed to say
positive things!), I chose to break my Delphi dependency for mobile. But as I
repeat, I know people have done good things with these tools, and this is a
personal decision, not a recommendation for others.

/Matthew Jones/

Matthew,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be writing apps for iPhone and Android but they need a local database (the app can't depend on an internet connection). I have not found many good 3rd party development systems for iOS that use a high level language like Pascal and local databases. Some products even charge royalties!

But I have XE4 and I'm eager to try it out. It has a lot of potential and I need to see how well it produces a "native" iOS app and how fast it takes to roll out new apps with it.

I guess I'll know in a couple of months.

Barry