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How to access SAP from App Studio

The whole idea of App Studio is to make complex things for mobile devices easy. When someone asked us if App Studio could interface with SAP, we knew it would be interesting.

SAP is one of the top business automation vendors. With more than 180,000 companies using their software (and 55,000 employees of their own), they’re a giant. They have created some of the most advanced and comprehensive software for corporations.

So far, however, it’s been difficult to integrate mobile applications with their software. Hopefully, after this blog post, the world will be a bit easier.

Here’s how we did it:
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App Studio 2.5.0.5 Released!

We have just uploaded 2.5.0.5 to the servers. It has a number of minor enhancements as well as bug fixes.

The download URL is the same as for 2.5.

2.5.0.5

  1. Code Window: Pulldown function list cleaned up and sorts properly.
  2. Code Window: Right click and Find now opens Find with current selection.
  3. Controls: ComboBox, Select now have a .text property.
  4. Controls: ComboBox, Select with empty initial list fixed.
  5. Controls: ComboBox, Select: Changing .ListIndex calls _onchange, _onclick.
  6. Controls: Controls now have a .Visible property.
  7. Controls: Label now has Caption property.
  8. Controls: TextBox, TextArea controls now have .text property.
  9. Docs: Handbook and Language Reference updated.
  10. Runtime: CSng() uses more digits of precision.
  11. Samples: Now opens complex pathnames properly.
  12. Translator: Dim a(5):s=a(b.c+1) gets proper brackets.
  13. Translator: Empty function args now default to empty string.
  14. Translator: Function variable names now initialized as empty strings.
  15. Translator: Internal function Format() renamed to fix potential conflict.
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jqWidgets: A collection of powerful new controls

Recently, one of our users turned on onto the jqWidgets Controls. They’re a set of powerful, good looking controls – and they work well with App Studio. The controls are free for non commercial use, $99 otherwise.

In Release 2.5, we added support for some of these controls:

  • Button
  • Chart
  • DragDrop
  • SwitchButton
  • Tabs

We have included samples for these. Before you try them, however, you need to download the jqWidgets library. Download it from http://www.jqwidgets.com/download/, unzip it and copy its ‘jqwidgets’ folder into your project folder.

There are many additional controls we have not made definition files for yet. See one you like? Let us know!

Here’s how the new controls look…
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The new name of the manifest file

When you deploy your project, App Studio sends an extra file to the server called the manifest. It contains a list of files which are part of your project and should be downloaded to the device, so it can run offline.

When we released App Studio in 2010, the ending for this file was .manifest. Someone noticed that Microsoft was already using .manifest for another purpose. A few months ago, the standard was changed to .appcache (though .manifest is also fine.)

In App Studio 2.5, the default for new projects is .appcache. Existing projects will continue to use .manifest and work fine. You can control the ending of the manifest file in the new ‘manifestfile’ Project Property.

If you want to use .appcache in your project, you will need to a few things:

  1. Change manifestfile in Project Properties
  2. Delete your project completely from your server and do a full deploy.
  3. Make sure your server gives a MIME type of text/cache-manifest for .appcache files. More info is here.

One of the benefits of using .appcache is that some servers are already configured with the right MIME type. An interesting one is DropBox: if you deploy your project to the Public folder of your DropBox, people can run it from there.

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App Studio 2.5.0.4 released!

We have just uploaded 2.5.0.4 to the servers. It has a number of minor enhancements as well as bug fixes.

The download URL is the same as for 2.5.

2.5.0.4

  1. Code Window: Fix syntax highlighting on Case Else.
  2. Controls: Add align property to Label, TextBox ad TextArea.
  3. Controls: Add List, ListCount and ListIndex to ComboBox and Select.
  4. Controls: Added setSelectionRange() to TextArea.
  5. Controls: Rendering bug fixed in Twitter control.
  6. Controls: Trim item names in NavBar and FooterBar.
  7. IDE: fixed problem with demo timeout.
  8. Language: Erase now works on multidimensional arrays.
  9. Libraries: Added new xml2json library.
  10. Samples: Added HelloWorldHebrew sample.
  11. Samples: Added SAP sample.
  12. Translator: Button1_onclick now translates to Button1_onclick().
  13. Translator: Dim a(3):s=a(b.c) fixed.
  14. Translator: Function names used as variables in functions fixed.
  15. Translator: MsgBox 10^2 no longer hangs IDE.
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App Studio 2.5.0.3 Released!

We have just uploaded 2.5.0.3 to the servers. It has a number of minor enhancements as well as bug fixes.

The download URL is the same as for 2.5.

2.5.0.3

  1. Code Window: Auto complete improved for a number of controls.
  2. Deploy: improved messages if local deploy fails.
  3. IDE: Added new -ftp-active start up command line switch
  4. IDE: Problem with Reset IDE fixed.
  5. IDE: Removed Del key that was behaving ambiguously.
  6. IDE: Updated demo message.
  7. Language: NSB.ShowProgress can now be removed with an empty argument.
  8. Samples: A number of samples updated.
  9. ToolBox: FaceBook and PayPal no longer error if offline.
  10. ToolBox: FaceBook and PayPal now have .hide() and .show() functions.
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What’s new in iOS 6 for App Studio?

The quick answer is that we cannot say, due to nondisclosures. iOS 6 is just available in a closed beta for now. However, I probably can make comments on what I have read on the web.

Here are some of the rumored improvements:

  1. Remote Debugging: It looks like there will be a way to have a desktop debug session hooked up to a device. This will make it much easier to debug on iOS devices.

  2. <input type=”file”>: This will allow interaction with local files on the device. I’m not sure whether this will be more than just photos. It should get rid of the need to use PhoneGap for some apps.

  3. Improved Audio: This would be great, if true. The current audio on iOS is not great.

  4. App Cache increased from 5 to 25 megs. Lets you do much larger apps!

We will continue to watch for more new stuff in iOS 6. We will try to make sure that as many of the new features as possible will be available to App Studio users when OS6 is actually release.

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Including Databases with your App

While SQLite databases work very nicely on mobile devices, there is no easy way to get them there. You can’t just add the name of your database to the manifest and be able to use it when your app is deployed.

Until App Studio 2.5, that is. When you add the name of an SQlite database to the manifest field in Project Properties, App Studio will automatically convert the database to a format which can be transferred, then convert it back into a database on the device.

Let’s see how this is done. We’ll use the famous Northwind database which comes with many Microsoft products. I went online and found it in SQLite format.
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The new NSB.ShowProgress dialog

App Studio 2.5 brings a new dialog box: NSB.ShowProgress. Here’s how it looks:

It floats above your current screen. You can put any message into it that fits. It can be dismissed by your app or by the user.

Here is how to put up a message:

NSB.ShowProgress("Please wait...")

and how to dismiss the message:

NSB.ShowProgress(false)

You could also issue multiple NSB.ShowMessage calls, each time updating the text in the box. This is useful for length operations. You can keep your user advised as to what is going on: the perceived waiting time will be reduced.

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Deploying your app via DropBox

Note: The problems that DropBox had which affected this method were fixed on Jan 28, 2013. Everything is working again!

Looking for a way to make your apps available to the world without getting your own website? DropBox could be the answer: best of all, it doesn’t cost anything.

DropBox, if you haven’t used it, lets you put a directory of files from your system in the cloud. To you, it just looks like another directory on your PC or Mac. Behind the scenes, the content of the directory is mirrored on DropBox’s servers. Where it gets really cool is that you can have that same directory on other computers – yours or your friends. Sign up is free, and you’ll get a couple of gigs of storage.
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