Alpha Anywhere Technical Overview
Alpha Anywhere is a platform for developers of varying skill sets, to create and deploy business applications for mobile devices and desktop/web. The platform itself, has two parts: the Alpha Anywhere Developer for building applications and the Alpha Anywhere Application Server for deploying applications built by the Developer.
Alpha Anywhere Developer (IDE)
Applications are created using the Alpha Anywhere Developer, a point-and-click type of IDE interface. One of the primary benefits of the Alpha Anywhere Developer is that it writes much of the code for you, but still allows you to add your own custom code when necessary. It also is tightly integrated with the Alpha Anywhere Application Server - so you can create the code for both the client-side device and the server all in one place.
The developer is a Windows-based, and requires Windows 10 / Windows Server 2016 or above. It can also be run on a Mac under parallels, and it can be used over Remote Desktop, allowing you to build applications on a PC, Mac, or Chromebook.
Alpha Anywhere Application Server
The Alpha Anywhere Application Server serves two roles in deploying applications. First, in the case of web applications, the server enables access to the web applications you have written on a web browser by typing in a URL or IP address.
Second, in the case of mobile applications, the server allows the application to make RESTful calls to exchange data or run server-side code.
The server software is Windows based, and requires Windows 10 / Windows Server 2016 or above. Alpha Anywhere hosting, including cloud hosting, is available from third parties. The Alpha Anywhere server can also be self-hosted.
The server can also be run under IIS using the Alpha Anywhere Application Server for IIS.
Structure of Alpha Anywhere Applications
Alpha Anywhere applications are built using client-side and server-side code.
Client-side code is a combination of HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript. This includes access to a wide variety of integrated tools and libraries, such as PhoneGap or Google APIs, that enable you to build applications that can access hardware, such as the camera or GPS, on mobile devices or generate charts and maps.
Server-side code can be written using Node.js or Xbasic, Alpha Anywhere's scripting language. In addition, small Xbasic stubs can be added that allow .NET assemblies to be used. This allows server-side code to be written in virtually all major programming languages.