B4J Question B4J and business application

[Anser]

Dear experts,

I just wanted to know that whether B4J can be used to build a full fledged business application (Inventory/Invoicing/Payroll etc) with the following

1. MDI Window Desktop Application
2. Web application that can be run from Browsers
3. Database connectivity to MySQL
4. Whether the common controls/views like grid, combo boxes, Spinners, textbox validations etc available in B4J, can be efficiently used to develop a business application ?.
   
5. Screens/windows based on PC's screen size/resolution. Just like B4A.
6. Report Designers and report generators.
7. If we lack certain controls/views for eg Multi Column Combobox, what is the possibility of buying or using such views/controls from third party ?. What kind of plugin's/lib's/tools should I look for, if I feel that the default B4J tools are not enough to meet my application development requirements ?
8. If I feel that I need a Report Designer, then what are the options available ? Third party libs that are compatible with B4J

I need to develop a business application. Need to make a decision that whether I can start off with B4J or not. It will be an application used by more than 1000's of users.

Or

Is it like that B4J is not intended to develop a Business application and instead it is supposed to be used to develop some server apps ?

I do understand that the app developed in B4J can be run on Windows, Linux, Mac etc

Regards

Anser

 

[Roycefer]

1. No
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes
7. There are lots of libraries for B4J that wrap a lot of extra functionality and UI elements. You can always ask for more in the Wishes forum or make offers to pay someone to wrap UI elements or Java libraries in the Job Offers thread.
8. Any Java library is ultimately compatible with B4J, provided you can write (or pay for) a wrapper library. If you see a project that meets your demands on Github or anywhere else and it hasn't yet been wrapped for B4J use, you can either get a Java wrapper for it attempt to use JavaObject to access the library directly. This latter option will be tedious for large and complex libraries but it may be quite suitable for smaller ones.

UI applications and server apps are necessarily separate. A server app is a non-UI project. Both can be developed with B4J and they can communicate with each other. Server apps written in B4J are quite secure and perform well even on very modest hardware:

https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/server-performance-measures.37502/#content
https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/raspberry-pi-2-server-performance.57856/#content

Not only can B4J apps be run on Windows, Mac and Linux but you can generate native installers that don't require the user to install Java 8:

https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/ui-apps-packaging-self-contained-installers.56854/#content

 

[Anser]

Thank you for confirming my concerns.

 

[Erel]

Note that you can create applications with multiple forms.

The "old" MDI style apps has many disadvantages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface#Disadvantages
WPF which replaces Windows Forms doesn't have built-in support for MDI as Microsoft discourages this feature.