Rapid Mobile App Development

Build apps for all platforms – in record time

Altova MobileTogether empowers developers with the tools they need to build sophisticated native apps faster than ever before.

Supported Platforms:

  • Android
  • iOS (iPhone, iPad)
  • Windows 10 & 11
  • HTML5 browser for other users

Why Choose MobileTogether for App Development?

Development Advantages
Business Benefits
Zero to app in about a week
Time savings, rapid ROI
True native apps for all platforms
Optimal end user experience
One design builds mobile AND desktop apps
Write once, deploy everywhere
No mobile development experience required
Empower any developer or tech-savvy user
Connectivity to all major data sources
Power any data-centric app imaginable
Unlimited developers, apps, and users
Affordable for firms of any size

How does it work?

The MobileTogether platform includes everything you need to build, deploy, and update your custom branded mobile apps

1

Developer or technical user builds and tests a mobile app in the free MobileTogether Designer.

2

Developer deploys the solution to your MobileTogether Server (either on premises or in the cloud).

3

App Store Deployment

Developer compiles code auto-generated by MobileTogether Designer and submits the app to the app stores.

RMAD Approach Speeds Development

MobileTogether uses a combination of drag-and-drop UI design, the powerful Action Tree visual programming language for event handling, and standardized functional programming for data selection and processing.

 

Then, MobileTogether does the heavy lifting for you, generating an app for all mobile and desktop platforms based on your single design.

 

This RMAD (rapid mobile app development) approach makes it easy for any programmer or web developer to build highly sophisticated, data-driven mobile apps for all platforms.

Data-Centric Apps

MobileTogether supports just about any back-end data source, including:

  • REST and SOAP Web services
  • XML
  • JSON
  • HTML

It also supports direct connectivity to the most popular relational databases:

  • Firebird 2.5, 3
  • IBM DB2 for iSeries® v6.1, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4
  • IBM DB2® 8, 9.1, 9.5, 9.7, 10.1, 10.5, 11.5
  • Informix® 11.70, 12.10, 14.10
  • MariaDB 10, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.9.2
  • Microsoft Access™ 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2019
  • Microsoft® Azure SQL
  • Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019
  • MySQL® 5, 5.1, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 8, 8.0.25
  • Oracle® 9i, 10g, 11g, 12c, 18, 19
  • PostgreSQL 8, 9.0.10, 9.1.6, 9.2.1, 9.4, 9.6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.5
  • Progress OpenEdge 11.6
  • SQLite 3.x
  • Sybase® ASE 15, 16
  • Teradata 16

Legacy data sources (Excel, EDI, text, etc.) can be easily connected via MapForce Server integration.

No other RMAD tool gives you such comprehensive access to critical data in a single version.

Build Feature-rich Reports, Dashboards, and Forms

Apps you build in MobileTogether can include all the sophisticated features and functionality today’s end users expect, including:

Integration of mobile device functions like camera and messaging in your native apps

Seamless integration of device functionality

Rich charts, graphs, and dashboards for mobile apps

Rich charts, graphs, and dashboards

Create mobile forms

Mobile forms

Localize your app in numerous languages

Localization in numerous languages

Signature capture for mobile

Signature capture

Push notifications

Push notifications

Barcode scanning/drawing in your mobile app

Barcode scanning & drawing

Add maps and geolocation functionality

Geolocation functionality

Per-platform customization for iOS, Android, Windows

Options for per-platform customization

Support for NFC (near field communication) messages

Support for NFC (near field communication) messages

QR scanning & drawing

QR scanning & drawing

MQTT support for smart device communications

MQTT support for smart device communications

Zero to App in Record Time

The MobileTogether cross-platform mobile development framework takes an entirely unique approach to rapid app development that means your native app will be ready for prime time in days – not the months required by competing solutions.

Zero to app

With MobileTogether, you no longer have to wait months for your app to be in the iOS, Android, and Windows app stores.

See how you can go from zero to app in about a week by downloading the free MobileTogether Designer.

Develop Apps with MobileTogether Designer

Thanks to its visual, RMAD approach, MobileTogether Designer makes it easy to build sophisticated apps – even if you’re not a specialized mobile developer.

Build apps in MobileTogether Designer

MobileTogether Designer is free to use by as many developers as your organization requires and provides numerous advantages:

  • Easily build sophisticated apps
  • Options for enterprise app development
  • Native apps for iOS, Android, and Windows
  • No Java, .NET, or Objective-C experience necessary
  • Write once; deploy everywhere
  • Target mobile and desktop devices
  • Connect to any back-end data source(s)
  • Built-in simulator lets you test your solution on all OSes
  • Automated app testing
  • Build the app front-end & back-end server logic at once

It’s easy to design your app UI by dragging and dropping components from the MobileTogether Designer Controls Palette. Don’t worry – MobileTogether takes care of rendering each control properly for each OS and form factor.

Event handling in the UI is defined by dragging and dropping actions into Action Trees, which provide a visual programming flow.

For processing and manipulating data, XQuery and XPath can be used, and MobileTogether includes a powerful expression builder and evaluator that makes it easy to build and debug these expressions.

Most developers are already familiar with XPath and XQuery. If you need a refresher, check out our free Intro to XPath as well as complete XPath training and XQuery tutorial for users with any level of experience.

The Secret to RMAD: Action Trees

Altova pioneered the Action Tree visual programming language to help developers build apps fast – without sacrificing the native functionality and features that end-users expect.

Shown below, Action Trees are comprised of Actions and Action Groups that define event handling and error handling for your app. The Actions Dialog lets you easily define actions for controls or pages by selecting one or more actions from the left-hand pane and dragging them to the editing window on the right, where the control flow is defined in tree-form and any necessary details are configured.

Action Trees visual programming language

Because Action Trees are independent of any particular device-specific programming language, they let you create sophisticated event handlers, control flow, and operations that work the same on any device, without worrying about the unique details of the API or SDK for each mobile operating system.

What Can I Do with Action Trees?

  • Drag and drop to define sophisticated page and control actions
  • Define advanced error handling scenarios
  • Access all device functionality (telephony, camera, geolocation, etc.)
  • Define loops, if-then-else structures, and database transactions
  • Define Action Groups that can be reused and nested
  • Define Action Groups that accept parameters and return results

Though working with ActionTrees is easy, it is a full programming language for building complex programming logic and is powerful enough to build any data-driven app imaginable - with no restrictions on complexity of the final product.

Comprehensive App Simulation, Testing, & Debugging

Built-in Simulator

When you're ready to test your mobile app, use the built-in Simulator window to instantly execute the solution to test logic, view the UI as it will appear on a variety of iOS, Android, Windows, and other devices, and examine changes in workflow data during execution.

With full simulation for all supported OSes, form factors, and portrait/landscape orientation, you can change device views instantly for fast, easy testing. As you check your app, the Messages window logs all activities performed in the Simulator.

This level of detail can be an invaluable for understanding behavior during development of a new app.

The Simulator also includes integrated debugging functionality for both Actions and XPath expressions.

App simulator in MobileTogether

Automated App Testing

The Simulator in MobileTogether also includes sophisticated automated testing features that let you:

  • Record a series of user actions as a test case
  • Replay the test case in the MobileTogether Designer Simulator environment
  • Deploy test cases to the MobileTogether Server for replay on a variety of client devices
  • Retrieve Test Run results from the server and compare differences

You can even modify the app to fix a bug and run the test case again to validate the results of changes, which makes this an indispensable QA tool for your mobile app development process.

automated app testing

The Manage Test Cases and Runs dialog shown above lets you control playback speed, collect snapshots of client views and page sources after each step, and compare test run results. You can deploy test cases to your MobileTogether Server with your app and select them to run from a special Automated Tests dialog on the server.

Then, any client device connected to the server can then execute the automated app test at the speed specified in the Automated Tests dialog. Additional columns in the dialog let you set logging details for each test run to capture snapshots of infosets, client views, and styles, which are recorded in test run files.

The log files of MobileTogether Server test runs can then be downloaded back to the MobileTogether Designer for analysis and comparison.

Built-in Debugger

Debug mobile apps with MobileTogether debugger

MobileTogether Designer includes an Actions and XPath Debugger that gives developers the power to test and debug their apps with precision to immediately understand any app behavior - all directly in the design environment. This makes it possible to debug both the execution flow inside Action Trees AND the results of XPath/XQuery functions called inside those trees.

When a stop point is reached - either based on a defined breakpoint or at the next Action - the appropriate debugging view opens and you can step through the execution of the Action or XPath expression, viewing the callstack, how values of variables are updated, and results of watch expressions.

MobileTogether is the most affordable rapid app development (RAD) framework that provides this level of debugging during development.

Generate Source Code for Native Apps

When your app is ready, the Generate Program Code Wizard in will walk you through the set-up process, and then MobileTogether Designer will generate complete projects ready to be compiled into native iOS, Android, and Windows apps.

After compiling your apps, you can submit them to the app stores for publication.

You can get complete details on compiling code for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and Windows 10/11 apps in the MobileTogether Designer Manual.

Benefits of MobileTogether App Code Generation

  • You have full flexibility to customize your app branding
  • Generate native apps for all platforms from a single design
  • Mobile and desktop apps for all platforms
  • You get full-featured apps without manual coding
  • Deliver native apps in under a week (subsequent app store approval times vary)

Power your App with MobileTogether Server

The MobileTogether framework includes the backend server for the mobile apps, so when you design and build your mobile app in MobileTogether Designer, you’re developing the app front-end and the back-end server logic at the same time, and in one environment.

MobileTogether Server is the back-end hub for your mobile app and acts as a gateway between end-users and your back-end data sources and infrastructure.

MobileTogether Server benefits:

  • Flexible installation options
  • Provides connectivity to back end data sources
  • Delivers high-performance data processing
  • Sophisticated cache control options
  • Integrates seamlessly with other Altova automation server software
  • Affordable pricing for any sized organization

You can install your MobileTogether Server software on premises, deploy in into a private cloud infrastructure, or host it in a public cloud environment such as AWS or Azure.

MobileTogether Server for mobile app deployment

Affordable pricing for the backend server is based only on server performance (i.e., number of CPU cores), not on the number of apps you wish to host.

High Performance Features

MobileTogether Server increases the speed and performance of mobile devices running your app by doing all of the heavy lifting for complex queries and calculations on the server itself - meaning that the results are displayed on the mobile app much faster.

This allows the end user's device to devote resources to other processes, decreasing load time and saving memory space.

Apps powered by MobileTogether Server are super-fast thanks to:

  • Granular caching options
  • Embed-XML-in-Design-File option
  • Utilizing XQuery to reduce amount of data transferred
  • Persistent data storage on client devices
  • Keep-Data-on-Server setting (e.g., calculating a chart on the server but only sending an image of the results to the client)
Configuring mobile app caching

MobileTogether Server comes with built-in caching for results of complex data retrievals. Your users don’t need to wait until the database or web service query, which can take minutes or even hours to execute, completes. Simply configure the frequency of updates for cached data, and users will always get the result of last update instantaneously.

MapForce Server Integration

When your mobile apps require more involved data integration functionality, MobileTogether Server integrates seamlessly with Altova MapForce Server.

You can use the MapForce Transfer action to call MapForce Server directly from MobileTogether Server to perform any data transformations required by your app. Since MapForce Server supports EDI, XBRL, flat files, Excel, Web services, and other data formats in addition to XML, JSON, and relational databases, this action lets apps utilize a wide range of legacy and other back end data sources.

Easy Pricing for Unlimited Potential

Unlimited Developers

MobileTogether Designer is free-of-charge, so you can roll it out to as many developers as required by your organization or project.

Unlimited Apps, Unlimited Users

MobileTogether Server pricing is based the performance (i.e., number of CPU cores) you require, not on the number of apps you wish to host. There is no limit to the number of apps you can host on your MobileTogether Server, or to the number of users that can connect.

MobileTogether Server is priced affordably, with per-core pricing starting at about $1000/year. And, it’s available free for 30-days.

This radically low pricing structure makes it possible for firms of all sizes to build and deploy five-star apps.

MobileTogether Feature List

MobileTogether FAQ

MobileTogether Video Demos