Steve,

<< It's 31 Oct in my part of the world, but still 30 Oct in the US. Will
there be an announcement on Elevate Web Builder in two (US) days time? >>

No, not yet.  I'm still cranking on it, and I'm finishing up the data
bindings that I decided to go ahead and do, but weren't on the original
schedule.  It's just a lot easier to have the data bindings/datasets
available than to force everyone to do their own protocols for getting data
back and forth, especially with grids.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

>>It's just a lot easier to have the data bindings/datasets
>>available than to force everyone to do their own protocols



Thanks Tim! Ease of data-binding will be a really, really big plus for EWB

I am quite excited about EWB.  

Is it possible to preorder and get access to the development version (or at least some alpha/beta in compiled package)?  Even if  it is no realase quality it would allow us to prepare an important project by the time it will be released.

Does EWB support browsers on mobile devices?

Is the technology - at least in theory - compatible with PhoneGap?

Regards,
Leslie

Leslie,

<< I am quite excited about EWB.  >>

So am I.

<< Is it possible to preorder and get access to the development version (or
at least some alpha/beta in compiled package)?  Even if  it is no realase
quality it would allow us to prepare an important project by the time it
will be released. >>

I'm seriously considering it.  I just have to finish up a couple of items
before I do so, namely the data bindings and the grids.  The compiler is
ready to go, as is the IDE.

<< Does EWB support browsers on mobile devices? >>

Yes, quite nicely, in fact.  The size of a small compressed EWB application
is still only around 150k in size.

<< Is the technology - at least in theory - compatible with PhoneGap? >>

I haven't looked into it very deeply, but probably not without some changes.
Of course, you can modify the EWB framework code as much as you like, so it
is always possible to make it work.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Thanks.

It would be nice to have an EWB examples section on the webside for standard and mobile browsers. If there is anything ready you feel worth showing already ... it could serve as an appetizer.

Tim,

you probably already have your own concept about  maniging data, so this migth be too late. Anyway, lately I have been working on something similar to  what you are implementing for EWB db handling.  And I was glad to find out  that someone else came to similar conclusions to mine about buffering records. Synopse's TSynTableData might be a useful resource for you too.

Leslie,

<< you probably already have your own concept about  maniging data, so this
migth be too late. Anyway, lately I have been working on something similar
to  what you are implementing for EWB db handling.  And I was glad to find
out  that someone else came to similar conclusions to mine about buffering
records. Synopse's TSynTableData might be a useful resource for you too.  >>

The final design of the dataset works in a "packet" mode where you can load
packets of rows at any time from a JSON string, which you can get from the
response content of a server request.  The rest of the time the dataset
works in a complete "disconnected" mode, and is very fast, while still
providing for data-aware controls.  Inserts, updates, and deletes are
tracked using separate structures, and can be retrieved as a JSON string
that can be posted back to the server using a server request.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Leslie,

<< It would be nice to have an EWB examples section on the webside for
standard and mobile browsers. If there is anything ready you feel worth
showing already ... it could serve as an appetizer. >>

I'm so busy working on the product, that I haven't had time to finalize any
examples yet.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim,

<<I'm so busy working on the product, that I haven't had time to finalize any
examples yet.>>

OK, Thx.

"Tim Young [Elevate Software]" wrote:

Leslie,

<< you probably already have your own concept about  maniging data, so this
migth be too late. Anyway, lately I have been working on something similar
to  what you are implementing for EWB db handling.  And I was glad to find
out  that someone else came to similar conclusions to mine about buffering
records. Synopse's TSynTableData might be a useful resource for you too.  >>

The final design of the dataset works in a "packet" mode where you can load
packets of rows at any time from a JSON string, which you can get from the
response content of a server request.  The rest of the time the dataset
works in a complete "disconnected" mode, and is very fast, while still
providing for data-aware controls.  Inserts, updates, and deletes are
tracked using separate structures, and can be retrieved as a JSON string
that can be posted back to the server using a server request.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com


JSON is standard. But is is only suitable for thin clients requesting data from  the server all the time. As usual there are two reasons for thicker clients:

  - Offline usage
  - Caching data locally to improve speed.

My conclusion was that it is the fastest and least resource hungry solution to have a compact way of  storing the record data which is suitable.

- for efficient server side caching
- for  record level  build of packets  for network transfer without the need to build recordbuffers field by field for every request
- for immediate record fetching into local indexable datasets to be used  to do  binary searches, setting ranges ...


JSON is neccessary these days, probably the first thing everybody expects to find in a tool like EWB. But its usage is limited and can be very slow.  My main concen is mobile usage. (The hardware being so much slower makes optimization and caching more of an issue.) I understand  the magnitude of work needed to create EWB and that v1.0 will have only the minimum neccessary features, so other data handling option  is not a feature request, it is more of a design question. Is the design prepared for that?

- is the EWB data handling code in design similar to delphi datasets? Can I create custom datasets on the client side to cache and index data? In other words is it easy to port an existing Delphi dataset implementation to use with EWB?
- for offline usage it may take more than storing the  data locally in datasets. Currently the standard dbengine for mobiles is Sqlite. So the question  is similar: can an existing sqlite DAC  in theory easily ported to EWB? I understand that memory alignment is an issue with ARM, so the question is about any other difficulties should be expected  beyond that.
- I am assuming that at some point EDB  will be an option to use as a local engine on ARM. Any comment on this?