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The problem the client faced was the need
to automate the writing of paper stock certificates towards reducing the
need for additional staff to handle data entry. And the application had
to be mobile, for use in the field. However, it was unlikely that the
stock inspectors would be anywhere near an internet connection during
the course of the work day. How to capture the information and send it
back to the office over what might likely be very limited bandwidth - in
some cases, dial-up? Address entry page with automatic lookup. |
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The answer was to create a
platform-independent architecture that could run in a portable
environment regardless of O/S. The first two platforms were Linux or
Windows; using Apache, MySQL, PHP, and an AJAX library (jQuery).
Payment and fees preview page. |
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Signatures and sketches of brands could be
captured electronically as JSON-encoded strings - not images. This
drastically reduced the amount of bandwidth needed when the data was
transmitted back to the central database. Signatures page. |
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The resulting information was captured to a
local instance of a MySQL database and then generated as a PDF, which
could be printed or emailed to the client. The PDFs themselves wouldn't
need to be transmitted either, as they could be regenerated from the
central database as needed after data upload. Brand sketch area on
cattle information page. |
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Previously the client had been dependent on
a series of heavy and difficult-to-maintain thick client .NET
applications. These relied on connectivity in an office environment and
responded poorly under heavy use (memory leaks etc.)
Horse/Mule/Donkey information collection page. |
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Hopefully this is a move towards platform
independence and away from an operating system-specific approach.
Fees preview in the Sheep/Goats payment page. |
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for your own simple data
collection framework - instructions and code |
