Applications Archives

A Cross-Platform Simulator for Enterprise Mobile App Development

January 21, 2015/in Applications, Development, Hardware, Mobile, XPath /by David McGahey

In the past it was difficult and time consuming to synchronize development of cross-platform mobile enterprise applications because each mobile operating system required a different tool set or unique steps to build a compiled result.

Altova MobileTogether simplifies and accelerates cross-platform mobile development with the MobileTogether Designer. Using MobileTogether, developers create a single Solution file for Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, and in HTML-5 browsers on other platforms.

Even better, the MobileTogether Designer includes a Simulator window that lets developers instantly execute the Solution to test logic, view the design as it will appear on a variety of devices, and examine changes in workflow data during execution.

Here is a view of the BizBudget example Solution as seen in the Simulator representations for iOS and Android devices:

MobileTogether Simulator showing iOS and Android devices

Both views were generated from the same solution file, simply by changing the simulation preview device.
Read more…

Tags: mobile, mobile development, mobile for business, MobileTogether, software tools, xpath

Cross-Platform Mobile Development with Altova MobileTogether

October 22, 2014/in Applications, Development, Mobile /by David McGahey

Software engineers have long wanted to create an application once and run it on multiple platforms. With today’s rapidly evolving mobile devices, the problem is even more urgent, as iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Surface tablets all compete for developer resources.

If you’re working on apps to communicate with enterprise users, you risk disenfranchising and alienating influential and important subsets of your colleagues when you build for each device sequentially or deliver unequal functionality.

Altova MobileTogether lets you create a cross-platform mobile solution once and deploy it in seconds to all mobile users in the enterprise, who may run it on iPhones, iPads, Android phones or tablets, Windows Phones, Surface tablets, or even laptop or desktop computers.

And these are not simple .html-based one-size-fits-all Web pages, but true native mobile solutions that take advantage of all the rich interface features users already know, delivering mission-critical data from databases, XML files, or by issuing HTTP requests to remote servers and filtering and formatting the response as necessary.

A mobile sales report application created with MobileTogether

The MobileTogether Designer is an easy-to-use development tool for creating high-quality business intelligence dashboards, interactive reports, enterprise forms, and other mobile applications by using drag-and-drop functionality. You simply drag various controls into the work area and assign data structures and actions to build a cross-platform solution.

Automating Data Integration Workflows – Download the E-Book

August 19, 2014/in Applications, Data Integration /by David McGahey

We’ve published an e-book titled Automating Data Integration Workflows with Altova FlowForce Server that is now available for free download from the Altova Web site.

Here is a brief description: FlowForce Server is a highly-customizable platform to automate data transformations defined by MapForce data mappings, report and document generation, and other tasks on dedicated servers, virtual machines, or workstations scaled for the scope of the project. FlowForce Server empowers data architects, analysts, and other IT professionals to efficiently complete enterprise-level data integration tasks.

Automating Data Integration Workflows with Altova FlowForce Server provides an overview of the Altova FlowForce Server platform through a series of real-world data integration tasks and examples.

Automating Data Integration Workflows with Altova FlowForce Server

The new e-book collects updated information from the Altova Blog, the Altova Web site, and some all-new material, organized in one location to help new FlowForce Server users get started and to suggest new applications and efficiencies for experienced users.

Process Multiple Input Files in a Single Data Mapping

January 29, 2013/3 Comments/in Applications, Data Integration /by David McGahey

Typical data conversion tasks require processing numerous input files that arrive in batches. Altova MapForce includes features that let you handle groups of files with minimal intervention.For instance, we recently copied a set of files from the memory card of a digital camera with GPS support. Each .LOG file is a CSV containing GPS coordinates for a single route.

Directory list of source files for data conversion

We quickly designed a mapping to convert the CSV data to XML-based .gpx format and processed all three files to generate three output files in a single execution:

List of automatically generated output files

Tags: data mapping, MapForce

The Altova MissionKit 2013 Introduces Seamless Integration of XMLSpy, MapForce, and StyleVision in Java Applications

November 8, 2012/in Applications /by Erin Cavanaugh

The Altova MissionKit 2013, empowers developers to integrate XMLSpy, MapForce, or StyleVision functionality seamlessly in custom Java applications for Windows. This frequently-requested capability adds to existing support for integrating these MissionKit tools in Visual Basic or C# applications, giving developers flexibility to add some or all XMLSpy, MapForce, or StyleVision views and functionality to their own custom apps.

Version 2013 of XMLSpy, MapForce, and StyleVision include a new API that allows each to run inside a window within a Java application developed using the Java Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) or Java Swing. This functionality allows MapForce 2013, for instance, to be embedded in larger applications where data mapping and transformation is only one requirement.

MapForce running in a Java ActiveX window

Altova provides sample applications with XMLSpy, MapForce, and StyleVision illustrating use of the Java API. You can access the sample applications from the command line or from within Eclipse.

Stored Procedures in Database Mappings

September 25, 2012/in Applications, Data Integration /by David McGahey

In response to user requests, the new release of MapForce 2013 includes robust support for stored procedures in database mappings as:

input components (for stored procedures that provide results)
output components (for stored procedures that insert or update data in a database)
or, stored procedures may be inserted as a function-like call (allowing users to provide input data, execute the stored procedure, and read/map the output data to other components)

The screenshot below shows the mapping of a stored procedure in SQL Server to create an XML file.

A MapForce database mapping with a stored procedure

Tags: data mapping, MapForce, v2013

Resist Data Integration Redundancy

April 30, 2012/in Applications, Data Integration /by David McGahey

The Internet makes massive amounts of data available for lots of interesting applications. But whenever you design a unique analysis and presentation of information you don’t privately control, you risk that the owner will offer the same view at some point in the future, instantly making your application redundant.

That’s exactly what happened to the Groupon API data-mining project we originally wrote about in August, 2011. Fortunately, the core of our project is a MapForce graphical data mapping. We can quickly and easily tweak the mapping and repurpose it to present an entirely different data set that provides new value.

HTML output from MapForce and StyleVision