I ran into this site a couple of months back and just took another look at it. It seems like it could be an ideal complement to EWB for many needs.  There's an access-level API, although you presently need to do your schema management through the website. (Their meta-data API isn't released yet.)

https://airtable.com/features

(I'm really trying to get away from doing my own hosting, mainly because of the non-stop onslaught from would-be hackers around the world trying to find holes to burrow into my server and take over my email and other services. I'm certain there are hacker sites around where they document every known app, plugin, and service, along with exploits that have been tried and their success levels. I think the goal of these people is to be able to take over any server anywhere at any time as quickly as possible. The majority of the traffic seems to target Windows servers, and they even pummel Linux servers with Windows-specific hacks, which only slows down the services ther. I'd rather let someone else deal with this crap.)

thetoolwiz wrote:

I ran into this site a couple of months back and just took another look at it. It seems like it could be an ideal complement to EWB for many needs.  There's an access-level API, although you presently need to do your schema management through the website. (Their meta-data API isn't released yet.)

https://airtable.com/features

Using this link, I can get some free credits if you register:

https://airtable.com/invite/g7VxGpIt

(I'm really trying to get away from doing my own hosting, mainly because of the non-stop onslaught from would-be hackers around the world trying to find holes to burrow into my server and take over my email and other services. I'm certain there are hacker sites around where they document every known app, plugin, and service, along with exploits that have been tried and their success levels. I think the goal of these people is to be able to take over any server anywhere at any time as quickly as possible. The majority of the traffic seems to target Windows servers, and they even pummel Linux servers with Windows-specific hacks, which only slows down the services ther. I'd rather let someone else deal with this crap.)

Oops, sorry, i forgot this platform has no editing ability.

thetoolwiz wrote:

> Oops, sorry, i forgot this platform has no editing ability.

Apart from that, it might have been good! 8-)

What is it your application actually does? What are the requirements
for the server? That's the biggest issue for any hosting spec.

--

Matthew Jones

The app I'm mainly considering this for is one that collects data from people participating in volunteer activities: name, date, event, start/end times, person accountable, comments.

There are three parties who need to get data: participants, the people who monitor groups of participants, and the folks who sponsor the events.

There could be a few dozen events per year, lots of people involved per event, but not a lot of events per person per year (maybe a dozen).

Not sure yet if this will be done as a for-profit or a not-for-profit thing, but we're thinking that any monies brought in will be used mainly for covering development and ongoing support costs.

-David

thetoolwiz wrote:

> The app I'm mainly considering this for is one that collects data
> from people participating in volunteer activities: name, date, event,
> start/end times, person accountable, comments.
>...
> There could be a few dozen events per year, lots of people involved
> per event, but not a lot of events per person per year (maybe a
> dozen).


Quite basic - should work on a Linode $10/month with the new PHP
back-end I'd have thought.

--

Matthew Jones

AirTable says they're not really intended for this purpose. They recommend Heroku, Firebase, or Parse (which I understand is being shut down).

I have Linux hosting. What are my options there? (Elevate requires Windows hosting for all of its server-based stuff, AFAIK.)

-David

On 3/9/2016 5:38 PM, thetoolwiz wrote:
> I have Linux hosting. What are my options there? (Elevate requires Windows hosting for all of its server-based stuff, AFAIK.)

Elevate Web server is windows based but EWB itself has no requirements
on the back-end so you can use linux or any other OS.

If you wish to use the EWB dataset functionality then you need to
implement this on the back-end when not using EWB Web server (JSON spec
for it is in the manual and it's quite straightforward).

EWB 2.05 release which is coming soon will make the PHP integration
easier so that might be the way to go if your hosting has PHP capability.

Raul

Raul wrote:

EWB 2.05 release which is coming soon will make the PHP integration
easier so that might be the way to go if your hosting has PHP capability.

Well, that'll be nice to see.

I noticed that RemObjects just released Remoting SDK and DataAbstract.

It looks like the former lets you write service tiers easily in five languages (C#, Oxygene, Swift, VB, and Delphi), probably not appropriate for use wtih AWB.  

However, the latter is a data abstraction layer and middle-tier server that sits on top of whatever your real DB might be and gives you a more abstract interface that can be accessed from virtually any client. It looks like it could be useful with AWB, but that's not entirely clear to me yet.

For more info:

http://www.dataabstract.com/da/

-Dvaid

I forgot to mention that DataAbstract does have a JavaScript interface.