Re: How many folks are developing apps for "smart phones"?

I have a handful of mobile apps that I have developed. The underlying technology is Java but it could just as easily be RPG.

The apps are as follows:
1. Employee application that allows employees to indicate that they will be absent from work. The same app can look up past absences and they can also see the status of their request and who was assigned to their absence.

2.Employee application that allows them to choose a work assignment based on an absent employee's request. This is the flip side to the employee absence application.

3.Employee application that allows then to "punch in" remotely. This is used by maintenance workers and school bus drivers to indicate the start and end of their work day when they can use a time clock to record their time.

These are brand new applications, still in beta (even alpha) at a few select school districts I work with. These apps run on Android or iPhone. I don't have an actual count of how many users are currently using the apps. You can see that they are pretty tightly tailored to specific uses. I think that is where most business mobile apps would fall.

Pete Helgren
Value Added Software, Inc
www.valadd.com
www.opensource4i.com


On 9/21/2010 9:43 AM, BT Consulting wrote:

Gang,

I haven't been on here for awhile so I might have missed discussions on this.

How many folks are developing apps that provide modern access to iseries data via
"smart phones"? I think it goes without saying "smart phone" access to data is the
"in" thing. I'm ask about this to see if the iseries community is into this modern way of accessing data. I'm not talking about 5250 emulation, although I'm sure there is a need for such access, I'm talking about graphical applications that access company information stored on an iseries with respect to business areas such as customer, product, sales,ordering, system management, business intelligence/ data warehouse applications, etc., etc.

If many ARE doing such apps, I'd like to know if it is, indeed, a popular type of application development for the iseries, what sort of apps are popular, pros and cons developing these sorts of apps for the iseries, problems, what types of languages are used for such applications, etc?

Thanks in advance,

Dave Odom