Mobile and Media Objects and Security

[cassh1]

Hi JDEList,
I have a few theoretical questions about mobile and not sure who best to ask.
We did put in an SR but can’t believe the answer so hoping that someone can tell me that it isn’t true.

Background:
- We are about to implement invoices stored as pdfs on sharepoint
- We will automate the media object attachment link to the voucher record in JDE as a URL
- We would like implement mobile next year and the first thing that our business will want mobilized is invoice approvals
- So they will need to be able to bring up the pdf from sharepoint, through the URL link in the media object
- Also thought that we should check on other OLE attachments (ie for expense mgmt.) that are on a windows server

Questions:
The original question was ‘will the mobile user be able to click through the media object URL to view the external to JDE stored media object attachment’ – whether OLE on the media object server or PDF in Sharepoint via URL?
We also want to know if using mobile will require exposing the window server and the sharepoint server externally to be able to do this. I thought not as would it not be a proxy id once someone is on JDE?

The answer was…No, that PDF attachments cannot be retrieved over mobile. Only .txt and graphic formats are supported out of the box. Also, there’s a 10MB limit on attachment sizes.
Seriously? No PDFs? and can anyone answer the security question?

Side question on licensing:
I am trying to find what we need to license to do mobile development. For a number of reasons I can’t ask our rep yet.
Is it this? Do we need license JDeveloper?
- Mobile Application Framework Foundation
- Mobile Suite Client Runtime
- Oracle JDeveloper

Thanks in advance for your help from you smart techies.

Sue Shaw (returning to JDElist after a long hiatus)
Currently on E1 9.1, Tools 9.1.4 but will likely upgrade before implementing mobile

 

[RussellCodlin]

Currently MAF only supports displaying text and some graphics formats so this is the limitation on mobile with that regard. I saw a presentation last year where one of the early adopters was talking about converting all of their PDF documents to JPEGs to be able to use them on their mobile field service app. No idea how that would work.

With regards to accessing files on Sharepoint, this would be done directly by the mobile client so you would need to sort out access from the client. If it is over VPN then you have some security but remember that the mobile client won't have authenticated through windows like a normal user would have if they are using a windows desktop to access JDE so you'll either need public access to PDF documents on sharepoint or some other security solution.

With regards to licensing, it is in a bit of state of flux at the moment so the best understanding I have right now is that if you're modifying existing JDE mobile apps you don't need a MAF license however if you are building from scratch then you need a MAF license. You can choose to license MAF either by application or by user. Application licenses are US$55,000 per app with unlimited users. User licenses are US$110 per user per app. You would need to confirm this with Oracle as the goal posts keep moving.

OLE attachments are a major integration headache no matter what system you're looking at as they were designed to enable direct editing of office files within the fat client. You really need to look at migrating away from OLE and using File/URL attachments for everything as OLE is really a COM era solution.

Final shameless plug - we deliver our own solutions in this space and have customers with mobile apps that integrate with Sharepoint documents as well as other platforms.

 

[cassh1]

Thanks Russell.

 

[Alex_Pastuhov]

And we have a solution for converting OLE attachments into plain files - One Attachment Manager software.

 

[serenity_now]

Currently MAF only supports displaying text and some graphics formats so this is the limitation on mobile with that regard. I saw a presentation last year where one of the early adopters was talking about converting all of their PDF documents to JPEGs to be able to use them on their mobile field service app. No idea how that would work.

With regards to accessing files on Sharepoint, this would be done directly by the mobile client so you would need to sort out access from the client. If it is over VPN then you have some security but remember that the mobile client won't have authenticated through windows like a normal user would have if they are using a windows desktop to access JDE so you'll either need public access to PDF documents on sharepoint or some other security solution.

With regards to licensing, it is in a bit of state of flux at the moment so the best understanding I have right now is that if you're modifying existing JDE mobile apps you don't need a MAF license however if you are building from scratch then you need a MAF license. You can choose to license MAF either by application or by user. Application licenses are US$55,000 per app with unlimited users. User licenses are US$110 per user per app. You would need to confirm this with Oracle as the goal posts keep moving.

OLE attachments are a major integration headache no matter what system you're looking at as they were designed to enable direct editing of office files within the fat client. You really need to look at migrating away from OLE and using File/URL attachments for everything as OLE is really a COM era solution.

Final shameless plug - we deliver our own solutions in this space and have customers with mobile apps that integrate with Sharepoint documents as well as other platforms.

Sorry to bump an older thread, but are you creating mobile apps using the JDEMobileHelpers (login.jar, JDEMobileFramework.jar, etc) or do you do everything yourselves somehow?

 

[RussellCodlin]

We have our own SDKs that are used to develop mobile, web and IoT clients to accelerate mobile development.

For example, the actual development time for the below solution, which included the integration of RFID readers and wearables as well as being capable of operating offline, took about two weeks to complete.
https://youtu.be/IHtXfxYkDlM

You'll notice that we actually worked with Oracle to deliver the solution and this was with a 9.1 customer. MAF was not included in the architecture.

 

[serenity_now]

We have our own SDKs that are used to develop mobile, web and IoT clients to accelerate mobile development.

For example, the actual development time for the below solution, which included the integration of RFID readers and wearables as well as being capable of operating offline, took about two weeks to complete.
https://youtu.be/IHtXfxYkDlM

You'll notice that we actually worked with Oracle to deliver the solution and this was with a 9.1 customer. MAF was not included in the architecture.

That's very cool stuff. I have delivered a couple of custom JDE apps using MAF and JDE mobile APIs but the licensing costs are pretty prohibitive. Not a lot of people doing apps it seems so cool to see things on this large of a scale. Does everything you do utilize AIS?

 

[RussellCodlin]

Does everything you do utilize AIS?

Negative. We have our own integration platform call Cantara which handles the provision RESTful services for JDE. It supports AIS as an integration method as well as XML Call Object, List and RunUBE. We have additional capabilities regarding media object attachments, blind logins with security tokens, session management, job scheduling etc etc. We can also provide custom extensions for things like Sharepoint or SalesForce.com as well as the ability to present OS scripts (batch, bash, etc) as REST services all securely available to the mobile client (or any client, be it another machine, fuel management system, whatever).

We've been doing this long before AIS existed but as I mentioned, AIS is a supported method of integration to JDE through Cantara.