From native to cross-platform hybrid development : CodeGT, design and development of a mobile app for ERP

The current trend towards mobility of individuals, together with the exponential growth of the number of mobile devices led the market to a boom in the demand for the development of mobile applications. Moreover, with the expansion and heterogeneity of the mobile devices and platforms, software companies need to search for faster and cheaper ways to develop applications that can span as many devices as possible to capture the market. Currently, the Android and iOS Operating Systems roughly share and dominate the mobile market, with timid expressions of other competitors. Each of these mobile operating systems were developed using their own languages, strategy and SDKs for development of applications using their libraries – known as Native apps. On the other hand, the evolution of HTML5, CSS and JavaScript created generic alternatives to create mobile apps that run on devices on all operating systems, although lacking the capability to access the device’s full potential. Alongside came the new Hybrid cross-platform development frameworks, which try to take the best of both worlds. This dissertation describes the evolution of the different mobile app development approaches and the state-of-the-art in their development techniques, and compares them with the Hybrid app approach, then highlighting the trends in mobile app development using Hybrid platforms and their advantages. This research includes the development of a mobile Hybrid application, CodeGT, which interacts with an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to access the Transport Documents registered in this ERP and access to the code transmitted by the Portuguese Tax Authority (AT), therefore not requiring the printing of documents and meeting a need of the business market. This application does already have customer industry companies interested in it.As tendências atuais em direção à grande mobilidade dos indivíduos, juntamente com o crescimento exponencial do número de dispositivos móveis, levaram ao enorme crescimento na procura do desenvolvimento de aplicações móveis. Além disso, com a expansão e heterogeneidade dos dispositivos e das plataformas móveis, as empresas de desenvolvimento de software necessitam de encontrar formas mais rápidas e baratas de desenvolver aplicações capazes de abranger o maior número de dispositivos para ir ao encontro da elevada procura do mercado. Atualmente, os sistemas operativos Android e iOS dividem e dominam o mercado de dispositivos móveis com expressões tímidas de outros concorrentes. Cada um desses sistemas operativos móveis foi desenvolvido especificamente para linguagens de programação e estratégias próprias e oferecem um conjunto de ferramentas de desenvolvimento com as suas bibliotecas, para a criação de aplicações nativas. Por outro lado, a evolução do HTML5, CSS e do JavaScript criaram oportunidades para o surgimento de alternativas genéricas para criação de aplicações multiplataforma que correm em todos os dispositivos e em todos os sistemas operativos, mas sem a capacidade de aceder todo o potencial nativo do dispositivo. Paralelamente surgiram as novas plataformas de desenvolvimento híbridas, que tentam tirar o melhor partido dos dois mundos. Esta dissertação descreve a evolução das diferentes abordagens no desenvolvimento de aplicações móveis mais concretamente na utilização de ferramentas multiplataformas para a criação de aplicações móveis híbridas e as suas vantagens. A pesquisa incluiu ainda o desenvolvimento de uma aplicação móvel, CodeGT, desenvolvido numa plataforma híbrida para interagir com um software ERP, acedendo aos Documentos de Transporte registados nesse ERP, assim como ao código transmitido pela Autoridade Tributária (AT), que assim dispensa a impressão de documentos e indo ao encontro de uma necessidade do mercado. Esta aplicação já tem empresas clientes interessadas nela

Evaluating usability of cross-platform smartphone applications

The computing power of smartphones is increasing as time goes. However, the proliferation of multiple different types of operating platforms affected interoperable smartphone applications development. Thus, the cross-platform development tools are coined. Literature showed that smartphone applications developed with the native platforms have better user experience than the cross-platform counterparts. However, comparative evaluation of usability of cross-platform applications on the deployment platforms is not studied yet. In this work, we evaluated usability of a crossword puzzle developed with PhoneGap on Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. The evaluation was conducted focusing on the developer's adaptation effort to native platforms and the end users. Thus, we observed that usability of the cross-platform crossword puzzle is unaffected on the respective native platforms and the SDKs require only minimal configuration effort. In addition, we observed the prospect of HTML5 and related web technologies as our future work towards evaluating and enhancing usability in composing REST-based services for smartphone applications

Domain-Specific Modeling and Code Generation for Cross-Platform Multi-Device Mobile Apps

Nowadays, mobile devices constitute the most common computing device. This new computing model has brought intense competition among hardware and software providers who are continuously introducing increasingly powerful mobile devices and innovative OSs into the market. In consequence, cross-platform and multi-device development has become a priority for software companies that want to reach the widest possible audience. However, developing an application for several platforms implies high costs and technical complexity. Currently, there are several frameworks that allow cross-platform application development. However, these approaches still require manual programming. My research proposes to face the challenge of the mobile revolution by exploiting abstraction, modeling and code generation, in the spirit of the modern paradigm of Model Driven Engineering

ERP implementation for an administrative agency as a corporative frontend and an e-commerce smartphone app

This document contains all the descriptions, arguments and demonstrations of the researches, analysis, reasoning, designs and tasks performed to achieve the requirement to technologically evolve an managing agency in a way that, through a solution that requires a reduced investment, makes possible to arrange a business management tool with e-commerce and also a mobile application that allows access and consultation of mentioned tool. The first part of the document describes the scenario in order to contextualize the project and introduces ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning). In the second part, a deep research of ERP market products is carried out, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each one of the products in order to finish with the choice of the most suitable product for the scenario proposed in the project. A third part of the document describes the installation process of the selected product carried out based on the use of Dockers, as well as the configurations and customizations that they make on the selected ERP. A description of the installation and configuration of additional modules is also made, necessary to achieve the agreed scope of the project. In a fourth part of the thesis, the process of creating an iOS and Android App that connects to the selected ERP database is described. The process begins with the design of the App. Once designed, it is explained the process of study and documentation of technologies to choose the technology stack that allows making an application robust and contemporary without use of licensing. After choosing the technologies to use there are explained the dependencies and needs to install runtime enviornments prior to the start of coding. Later, it describes how the code of the App has been raised and developed. The compilation and verification mechanisms are indicated in continuation. And finally, it is showed the result of the development of the App once distributed. Finally, a chapter for the conclusions analyzes the difficulties encountered during the project and the achievements, analyzing what has been learned during the development of this project

Measuring a HTML5 Hybrid Application's Native Bridge on iOS

Mobile apps are intended to be created with mobile platforms development tools and programming languages. This native development requires specialized skills and can therefore be prohibitively expensive. HTML5 hybrid app development is a popular alternative for native mobile app development. This development model allows developers to use standard web technologies and the end result can be indistinguishable from a native app by its visual representation. This model enables faster iteration speed, allows any web developer to build apps and supports simultaneous cross-platform development. However, since the web technology is not as performant as native, these hybrid apps have often been criticized for being noticeably 'laggy' by the app developer community and end users. One of the key components that affects HTML5 hybrid apps performance is the native bridge used in the app. This component bridges the embedded HTML5 application to the device features that wouldn't otherwise be available (such as writing to a file on the device's file system). The native bridge is one of the few components that a developer can freely change. Selecting the best native bridge for the app's needs is important as an inefficient native bridge can cause human noticeable delay in the app. The performance of native bridges has been acknowledged in academia and industry, but very little researched systematically. This thesis introduces a systematic method to evaluate native bridges performance. Along with this method, this thesis also describes a new open source tool implementing this method for benchmarking different native bridges. This tool hosts reference implementation for 32 native bridges. Example results from a test suite that tested all implemented native bridges with two embeddable web view engines (UIWebView and WKWebView) on four distinct iOS devices (two iPads, iPhone and iPod Touch) are evaluated. The results show that the majority of the known native bridge methods can cause human noticeable visual and auditory latency. It is also indicated that the performance is largely affected by app usage patterns. The slowest measured native bridge was over two times slower (from no delay to significant user interface delay) than the fastest one

Vertailu mobiilisovelluskehityksen työkaluista teollisuuskäyttöön tarkoitetuissa monialustaisissa sovelluksissa

The mobile device base is strongly divided between different mobile platforms, most importantly Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Applications developed for one platform with traditional development methods only work on that platform, and supporting multiple platforms requires developing the application separately for each of the platforms. Different cross-platform methods have been introduced as a solution to this problem. They allow deploying the application for multiple platforms from a single code base. This thesis studies when a cross-platform solution is a viable alternative to developing the application separately for each target platform. The focus is on industrial applications that communicate wirelessly with electric drives. Three main development methods are identified as native, web and hybrid applications. Native applications are developed for a single platform with the platform's standard development tools and conventions. Web applications are developed with web technologies and hosted as web sites. Hybrid applications utilize web technologies but are installed on the device like native applications and are developed with specialized cross-platform tools such as PhoneGap. Each method is evaluated by various criteria. The evaluations show that on average the methods are almost equal, and their suitability depends on the target application. A matrix is generated that calculates the best fitting method for a given application with the help of application-specific weight values. The weight values represent how important each individual criterion is for that application. The matrix is then used to select the best method for three study cases. The results show that a cross-platform solution can sometimes be a viable option, based on the needs of the application.Mobiililaitekanta on voimakkaasti jakautunut eri mobiilialustojen välille, joista tärkeimmät ovat Android, iOS ja Windows Phone. Yhdelle alustalle perinteisillä kehitysmenetelmillä kehitetyt sovellukset toimivat vain sillä alustalla, ja usean alustan tukeminen vaatii sovelluksen kehitystä jokaiselle alustalle erikseen. Ratkaisuksi tähän ongelmaan on esitetty erilaisia alustariippumattomia menetelmiä, jotka mahdollistavat sovelluksen julkaisemisen useammalle alustalle yhteisestä lähdekoodista. Tässä työssä tutkitaan milloin alustariippumaton ratkaisu on varteenotettava vaihtoehto sovelluksen kehitykselle erikseen jokaiselle alustalle. Päähuomio on teollisuussovelluksilla, jotka kommunikoivat langattomasti taajuusmuuttajien kanssa. Kolme tarkasteltavaa menetelmää ovat natiivi-, web- ja hybridisovellus. Natiivisovelluksia kehitetään yhdelle alustalle alustan tyypillisillä kehitystyökaluilla ja menetelmillä. Websovelluksia kehitetään webtekniikoilla ja tarjotaan nettisivuina. Hybridisovellukset käyttävät webtekniikoita mutta ne asennetaan laitteeseen natiivisovellusten tavoin. Niitä kehitetään erikoistuneilla alustariippumattomilla työkaluilla kuten PhoneGap:llä. Jokainen menetelmä arvostellaan erilaisten kriteerien perusteella. Arvostelut osoittavat että keskimäärin menetelmät ovat lähes yhtä hyviä, ja niiden soveltuvuus riippuu kohdesovelluksesta. Tähän kehitetään matriisi joka valitsee parhaan menetelmän kohdesovellukselle sovelluskohtaisten painokertoimien avulla. Painokertoimet kuvaavat kuinka tärkeä tietty kriteeri on sovellukselle. Matriisia käyttämällä valitaan parhaat kehitysmenetelmät kolmelle esimerkkisovellukselle. Tulokset osoittavat että alustariippumaton ratkaisu voi tietyissä tapauksissa olla mahdollinen, riippuen sovelluksen tarpeista