Saturday, August 31, 2013

Inventory manager : host the database on a computer

I am going to publish shortly a new update for Inventory Manager : the ability to use a database hosted on one of your computer using Windows Vista/7/8.
This shared database will be usable by several devices simultaneously. This new feature is available only for paying users.

This new functionality is BETA at the moment, it means that some problems may occur. So be careful and make frequent updates if you use this new functionality !

How it works :

- First download the "network service" installer : http://goo.gl/W5wZJd
- Install it, that's quite easy (next, next, next...). Ah yes, you will be asked admin rights : that's because a new background service will be installed.
- Still on your computer, open the freshly installed application "Inventory Manager". It's crap, but will show you which IP/port number you'll have to use.

- Now, back to Inventory Manager (on your Android Device), open the preferences
-For the parameter "Where to store data", choose "Local network service".
- In the server settings, enter the IP and port number on the server.

Now Inventory Manager will use the network database. But it's empty for now, so you may want to migrate the database hosted on your device :

- From main screen, click on the menu backup/restore
- Click on the button "Transfer data to network service"
- Click "yes" in the dialog box, wait some minutes, and it's done. Please note, if there was already some data on network database, it will be overridden, so be careful with this operation !

Now, some warnings :
- Don't forget to make periodic backups, even if you use this new feature. I will implement the possibility to backup directly from the server when I have time
- At the moment, if you configure it to use the service, you won't be able to do anything with Inventory Manager if your device cannot contact the server for any reason. I may implement a sync feature in the future.
- About security, well ... there's no security at all for now : data transmission is not encrypted, there's no user management, no login/password... So be careful if you want to host confidential informations, or if you make the service available from Internet !

I hope it will be useful, and I'll now think about a cloud storage for that app.