Question

I have a potential client that wants to build a platform agnostic application. Initially it’ll run on a windows 7 tablet and will expand. Its a roofing business, so they’re going to take pictures with the camera, fill out some forms, and then generate a report from it. The first thing I can think of is making an API call to a web service I create that does some crystal reports magic them returns to the client.

Problem is, they aren’t always guaranteed internet access. What can I do here? My thoughts right now are building the app in rails or MVC 4.

Answer 1

It is pretty hard to answer your question since it won’t be an exactly answer, but my thougths are:

1° – Build a Windows Phone app that will fill out everything that is
needed and store locally

2° – Do a background process that will send this via rest calls to a
service

3° – Build the service to receive the requests and a rails app to the
client to login and have access to the reports this can be made in
rails

This is a possibility if they need to access reports from anywhere. Otherwise the reports could be made in the tablet itself.

Just some thoughts, the solution may take a very different path, since you were not accurate enough to a definitive answer.