Windows 8 on Smartphone - any apps to support Foxpro code/data?

[dmusicant]

I'm thinking of getting a smartphone (have never had one!), in particular a Nokia 520, which
uses the Windows 8 OS. I have a lot of Foxpro data and code and wonder
if there's some way I can put Foxpro data on the phone and write and run
code to access it. Is this a way out concept or has someone done
something with this? Please forgive my naivety, but I'm wondering if I can
even install some version of Foxpro itself on a Windows 8 smartphone!

Thanks for info.

Dan


Email: dmusicant at sonic dot net

 

[Olaf Doschke]

I actually have the same Nokia 520 since some days, it's a Phone 8.

From MS Surface Pro is the only mobile platform allowing Full Windows 8, also running VFP apps, other Win 8 tablets (no RT tablets) offer the same, but no phone.
Phone8 is no full Windows, it's even not Windows RT, it's Phone8. It best compares with Win RT, though, which means no VFP.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[craigber]

No, you cannot install VFP on Windows Phone.

You choices for application development for Windows Phone are XAML or WinJS, either using C# or VB.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Mike Lewis]

Dan,

Are you especially committed to a Windows 8 phone? If you want to access Foxpro data from a phone, you should first find an app that lets you do that, and then look for a phone that supports whichever platform that app runs on (Windows 8 Phone, Adroid, iOS, etc).

For example, on Android, there is an app called Cellica which claims to be able to read and write Foxpro data across a network, and gives you some tools to create limited apps for doing that on your phone. I'm not necessarily recommending it. I'm just giving it as an example of the sort of app that might meet your needs. The point is to find the app first, and then to choose the phone the it runs on. (And if you can't find an app that supports VFP directly, perhaps you might find one that allows you do connect via OLE DB.)

As the others have said, you can't run VFP itself on Windows 8 Phone or Windows RT. For that, you would need the full Windows Professional, which is mainly available for desktops, laptops and a few larger tablets, but not for hand-held devices.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[dmusicant]

Ah, thanks for the responses. I'm not committed to a Windows 8 phone or the Nokia Lumia. It's only the last few days that I've started seriously thinking about getting a smartphone. Before that it was a wistful thinking, a wondering. It's my desire to have GPS navigation in my car that was the impetus. I actually ordered a Garmin Nuvi 2595LMTHD (to arrive today from Costco online), but since discovered that a smartphone can also support Sat Nav, and truly I drive so little I think I may well be content to just get a smartphone that supports offline GPS navigation with voice commands (the Lumia does, after downloading maps, and I think probably without buying a 3rd party app) and return the Garmin to Costco unopened.

In my efforts to determine what smartphone I might want, the question occurred to me yesterday if I might be able to access my Foxpro data with the phone, thus my post. It's not a critical thing, it would be nice, thought maybe potentially great to be able to do so if not too difficult to do. I don't have C# or VB chops, don't know if I want to go Android and look into Cellica. I have heard that the Nokia 520 or 521 is relatively cost effective way to get into the smartphone arena. Cost-comparable Android devices are said to be rather laggy. I have a whole lot of experience with Windows, ever since the 3.1 days it's been my only OS. I don't know that this means that I'll be more comfortable and pleased with a smartphone using the Windows 8 OS than Android or iOS, however I'm told that the interface of the Nokia 520/521 is relatively simple and effective. There isn't the plethora of apps available that Android or iOS feature, but not having any experience with that area I won't know what I might be missing, at least not from the get-go.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Well, you have internet access with a smartphone, and with that you can access most anything, once you have something in the internet, which could for example be based on AFP, Fox Web, ActiveVFP, West Wind Web Connection etc., but that's the obvious way into any internet enabled device, no matter what device and what OS. Smartphones default to mobile versions of websites, if present (eg m.yoursite.com), but also show the normal webpage (

http://www.yoursite.com).

Having some info in a tile of your smartphone start screen and/or in an app, you can start from there or the complete application list, is another thing, that needs a phone app development:

http://developer.windowsphone.com/en-us

Bye, Olaf.

 

[craigber]

ARG! m.website.com. Please kill thoughts of that now. It's considered outdated. Web sites should be reactive and resize based on the screen size you are using.

Dan, who will need access to the app from their phone?

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Olaf Doschke]

You're seeing this from the wrong perspective, Craig. If someone explicitly wants to check some data via smartphone (not for the public, but perhaps just for himself as admin/developer) he could make use of a mobile website for that, especially with a smaller smartphone still defaulting browser usage to mobile sites. That can be done, without putting this part into the normal website for the public. The goal here isn't to make a website responsive to device metrics, that's another problem.

Craig, I see your thoughts often get triggered by such details and you have very absolute thoughts on things in general. So you dislike mobile websites, then you disregard any device still using that. Also see there still is m.facebook.com and many other big players offer such specialised versions. Pardon me, but your feelings aren't very constructive here.

And just as a side note: Responsive design fails in many cases for the nexus10, as it has a huge resolution, yet still is just a 10 inch device. I see sites in the same way as for the desktop, but still unreadable/unusable. Everything has it's pros and cons and I wouldn't put m.website.com aside, just because web content can be designed responsive to screen resolutions. If you ask me, there is still a lot to learn from web designers and developers in regard of using this feature more wisely.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[dmusicant]

In case there's a misunderstanding (I think there might be), my thought was not to make my data available either to others or myself remotely. That might be helpful (it would be the latest data from my server), but my concept was just to have the data right there on the smartphone, either in built-in memory or a card (e.g. microSDHC), and be able to access it, or at least to some extent, as needed/desired. It's not crucial, but there have been circumstances when I wanted to do that when away from home when I have not been able to -- i.e. I didn't have a laptop with me. Of course, if I relied on this strategy, the data would only be as fresh as the last time I copied it to the smartphone from my network (i.e. by wifi) at home.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Dan,

my concept was just to have the data right there on the smartphone, either in built-in memory or a card (e.g. microSDHC), and be able to access it, or at least to some extent, as needed/desired

It's helpful that you've clarified that point. In your original post, you referred to your FoxPro data. What you clearly mean is that you want to access (on your smartphone) data that was originally maintained in FoxPro on your PC. The point is that it doesn't have to be in Foxpro format once it reaches the phone.

That's important because, while you are unlikely to find a way of processing DBF files on the phone, there are many ways of accessing and processing data in general, and of transferring it to and from a computer system. So, the question you really need to ask is what tools are available for working with your data (on the phone) in the way you want, and then to worry about how you transfer it into and out of your VFP database.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[craigber]

No Olaf,

It's like IE 6. As long as sites keep supporting it, people won't upgrade. Killing m. sites will go along way.

And I think it's you that isn't looking at the general picture. Reactive sites that scale automatically are the way things are heading.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Well, and you still don't get, I didn't recommended mobile web for making a website work on small displays.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[TamarGranor]

FWIW, not everyone has the most up-to-date phones with up-to-date browsers. m. sites work; adaptive sites don't always. I was stunned when I got my new phone over the summer how many sites suddenly looked better. They hadn't adapted properly on the old one.

Let's not assume that everyone has the latest and greatest.

Tamar

 

[Olaf Doschke]

>my thought was not to make my data available either to others or myself remotely. That might be helpful (it would be the latest data from my server), but my concept was just to have the data right there on the smartphone.

Well, that was what I suspect. Mike correctly pionts to the fact there are other forms of data as DBFs.

My thought was it's more important to keep the data as DBFs. Conversions are not impossible, and it may be easy to convert one dbf into a list, even just a csv file, but it can get a a lot of work depending on the amount and complexity of data.

My suggested solution really is, what you want to avoid, to not stoere the data local, as the phone won't be able to handle it as dbf and won't execute vfp code, but to put the data into the web and make it accessible for you privately via vfp web technics. Because what matters, really? First of all: To have your data on the phone. Then the ease of it, and then the performance of it. Compared to the situation you don't have your data with you, you can wait a bit. And compared to the need to convert the data and perhaps even learn .NET to write an app handling the data.

So, if you ever used any of the web related flavors of VFP, it would be easy to program a simple web access to your data. If you would use the mobile web (m. subdomain) or not, wouldn't matter much, I just mentioned mobile web, because of your choice of Lumia 520. It does display

http://www sites,

too, that's not the problem, but you don't need fancy layouts etc. to view your data, so the shrinked down mobile web would work, especially for personal usage.

The big question is, whether you did any web development with vfp yet. It won't pay to begin that just for that matter, but it could be a short cut to your overall goal in your case of knowledge and it would also work with any smartphone. But specifically the Lumia 520 has "just" 800x488 pixels and also defaults to mobile web. To go back to the facebook example, the first thing m.facebook.com suggests is instead usng their facebook app for phone8. But that is something harder to do than outputting some simple HTML. It's what always turned out the fastest way to get your vfp data and code working for you on a mobile device for the vfp developer: Put it into the web, outside of the mobile device. It's not ideal, but faster to implement. If you want to have data offline, too, you need to learn new things.

Of course it also depends on the type of data you need. You can put files on a phone, eg even office documents, pdfs. There are gazillions of apps syncing your appointments, contact data, calendar, mails. If you need that type of data, use some already existing app. One of the easiest ways to use on a windows phone is office 365, hosted exchange and such things. Everything then already is there, because it's online anyway.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[craigber]

Tamar, that's same argument that kept IE 6 alive for long past when it should have died. m. sites are essentially their own site. So, you basically have two sites, one the regular site, the other m. Using reactive design, you don't have to do that. And keeping m. sites alive will simply cause them to exist for a longer time. The number of web developers calling for the death of m. is growing. In Dan's case, he's talking about a new phone with a more modern browser.

Olaf, my point is that if you have to develop a site anyway, don't do one for m. Do it with more modern and up to date designs the react to the screen size. My Lumia 920 also defaulted to mobile sites. It's easy to change the default and I have.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Olaf Doschke]

You can have your oppinon an that, but this is not the topic of this thread. I'd even agree, if this would be about web site development, but it isn't. I didn't know you can change that default, but I wouldn't do so anyway.

I'm not suggesting developing a mobile web site and later having the need to port that to www, it would just be there for personal access to own data, for browsing and filtering. I wouldn't go for that little needs with an app.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[mplaza]

You can have a sqlite local db and a html5 page to access your static content for a start.

Check this great blog and a simple demo, showing how to create a db, create a table and make simple queries:

http://blog.darkcrimson.com/2010/05/local-databases/

you can view the demo ( just tested chrome ) that creates a local db and a simple table on your browser with 5 columns here:

http://blog.darkcrimson.com/samples/localdb/

If you are using Chrome, press ctrl+shift+I to open developer tools, and go to:

Resources->Web SQL ->DemoDb -> page_settings to explore the local database.

I can reccomend the sqlite manager ( I've only tested firefox ) it gives you full control over sqlite with ease:

https://code.google.com/p/sqlite-manager/

Marco

 

[Olaf Doschke]

> I have a lot of Foxpro data and code and wonder
> if there's some way I can put Foxpro data on the phone and write and run
> code to access it.

Since we clarified you neither can run your VFP code, nor use VFP data with browsers or native apps on Phone 8, the wish to access your data remains, as you say: "be able to access it, or at least to some extent, as needed/desired"

You would now need to think about how much time you want to invest to convert your data and write some new code in C# or Javascript/HTML/CSS to something stored and running on the phone directly or instead use an easier migration path to a web solution based on vfp code and data. That'll make migration much easier, but surely you also don't just put your EXE on the web. It also has the one main disadvantage: Only being available online.

Marco suggests another solution in using a browser embedded standard of SQLite, but that needs support from the browser. Also look at the header of the blog article:

Please note: This article was written in May 2010 and as of November 18, 2010, the Web Applications Working Group has reached an impasse and does not intend to maintain the Web SQL Database any longer.

Another downside is, it's not working with IE, also not on Win8.1 with IE11. Also not on a Lumia520. So you would need to install another browser to go that route. And even if some browsers will continue support, it's not in the W3C standard anymore, other local storage engines still exist, but are rather not working with SQL queries, as SQLite. That's the sad side in regard to browsers and local data.

Two other local data storages are currently active:

http://www.w3.org/TR/webstorage/

and

http://www.w3.org/TR/webstorage/

But both are less powerful than SQLite, and even SQLite is already a weak SQL database.

I'd rather look out for the apps you need and want to use on your smartphone and see if you can feed them with your data officially, meaning not by hacking into their setup or installation directory, but by using some API, perhaps, or sharing files, they support.

I already suggested PDFs, PDFs apps have search capabilities, so you could output data in reports to PDFs and use them on the phone for lists to search through. Just one very simple and easy solution just needing a VFP report and preparing PDFs for the phone.

Nokia Phones com with HERE Maps and you can register and put customer addresses as favorites into your HERE/Nokia account for yourself and then use these adresses/markers on the phone. Just another example.

You can already do much without developing for the phone directly, but using already existing apps. Smartphones don't just exist since a few days, so there already is a lot you can use right away.

What to look for then is not how you get your data and code on the phone, but what data you can put into what online accounts for phone apps or websites to use on the phone. Of course that has it's disadvantages in the privacy of your data. But suggested you want to develop an app to find a route to a customer on nokia or bing maps, you'd at least give your address data to Nokia MS on a one by one basis.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[craigber]

Olaf,

You are correct. However, most of the solutions presented are web-based and even the one proposed for an m. site. My comments are appropriate to this thread.

PDFs will work fine if you're ok with static data and updating the PDFs as needed. It would be a very simple solution.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Nro]

Hello Dan

I’m using a small application (Pendragon forms) written in MS Access that is generating HTML 5 code for forms and data capture. It’s working on Android and iOs devices (never try it with Windows). You can link it with ODBC directly with your VFP data and the learning curve is very short (no need to learn HTML, PHP, sqlLite or all the Apache plumbing).

You synchronize with the server and you can see your VFP data.

It’s simple, and it’s working.
Bye

Nro