BOA Presentation (Build Online Applications)

[skiman]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for organizing it.

I do hope it is clear now what can be done with BOA? It's rather difficult to explain how it works.

[Tom]

Hi, Chris.

Thanks for presenting.

I understood that BOA is a software needing an Apache server which is contacted by the users. Then BOA talks to another server which is my application endpoint (four kinds of endpoints) and answering the requests (with JSON structures) the BOA software creates. BOA builds complex pages and forms from simple abstracts. This is a very cool approach.

Maybe you should have shown a code snippet representing an endpoint created with Xbase++. What do you use there? Xb2.Net or HttpEndpoint() from Xbase++?

[skiman]

Hi TOm,

Yes, you understood it right.

I'm using xb2net since 2007. I never looked at the Xbase++ httpendpoint(). I suppose it would work about the same.

My API server is a modified webserve.prg which is delivered with xb2net. I would expect there is a similar sample with Xbase++.

I will post some more info.

[skiman]

Hi,

Yesterday during the presentation I saw yesterday some names from this forum. There were some remarks and questions on the xbaseforum. I have posted the following answers on the xbaseforum. Maybe some of you are also interested in it.

I'm preparing some Xbase++ code to show how you need to create your back-end. It won't be a copy/paste solution, since I'm using functions from my own application for the windows version. But it will make easier to see how it works.

Hereby I want to give an answer to several questions.

Open-Source: No, it won't become open source. I invested almost 100K into the project, and since I'm not Bill Gates...

Future of BOA: We are using BOA as platform for our own online invoicing since 2020. We will continu with it, and in future we will also need new features, which we will add to BOA. You are never sure if something will stay on the market, just ask the Foxpro developers.

Webshop: BOA isn't developed to create a webshop. If you need an online version of your Windows software, you can use it. I don't think anyone of you has a webshop created in WIndows? If you need a webshop i advise don't develop it, we did it in the past, but use an existing system. Use a system as Woocommerce or Prestashop, and use their API to communicate with it. We combine these webshops with our Windows application by synchonysing all the data for products, customers every 5 minutes. Every modification comes into a queue, which is processed every 5 minutes. Also every 5 minutes we read all the orders from the shop and create new customers. This way our customer can hire his webdesigner as he wich, and we connect his data to it. Our experience with JSON helped us a lot. As Klaus said, it is a solution to make data online accessible, but it is also a complete powerfull solution to create complete solutions.

REST-Api: There is the remark from Semleit which is correct. By creating the API, you open your Windows application for other external developers. Your work wouldn't be lost if you decide after some time to stop with BOA. Suppose you get the knowledge to develop with Anguler, Vue, React, you could use the API endpoints as you wish at that moment.

Missing elements: Ramses says there are a lot of missing things? I'm open to add new form elements if this is needed. If there are any suggestions, please let me know.

Internal tool: The BOA project was started as internal tool after 10 years of creating an online version with html pages and javascript in combination with xb2net. While the project was growing, we realised that this could be a solution for every developer of legacy applications who are struggling with the move to the online world. From that moment on, we started to develop with this in mind, so it is rather universal to use.

Ideal solution: Is BOA the ideal solution? No, I suppose it is not. But it gives the possibility to start developing your own powerfull online version of your software TODAY. I lost 10 years because I was hoping to find an ideal solution, and I saw some promises passing even by Alaska. None of them could offer me a solution without learning HTML, CSS, Javascript/Typescript and a lot of other tools. Also none of them made it possible to create a Hybrid solution by using the same data. If you check solutions as Servoy or JMix, you need to learn a completely new syntax, and it won't be possible to use your current data, unless you are already using an SQL database. Trust me, I tried both.

Harbour: I saw someone using Harbour as a base to create an online version of his 'Kassabuch'? This will also cost a lot of time, and I'm wondering why not using the cxp pages of Alaska at that moment? And how about the future of Harbour?

BOA Server: I think it wasn't clear how to install BOA for your customers? I suppose most of you has a website which you are hiring from a provider. Suppose you have www.mycompany.com. If you go to the admin of your website, you normally can add a subdomein. This means you can create invoicing.mycompany.com. At that moment there will be a folder invoicing on your server. If you put the BOA application in that folder it will be ready to use. Your customers can go to http://invoicing.mycompany.com and the login of BOA will appear.

If there are any questions about the implementation of BOA, don't hesitate to post them here.