how can I design a memento database on a pcdesktop and then pass it to the phone without having to use the cloud.

[merlin....@gmail.com]

how can I design a memento database on a pcdesktop and then pass it to the phone without having to use the cloud.

[Bill Crews]

First, in my opinion (and I'm sure others will disagree), the user interface of the mobile edition is superior to that of the desktop edition. I do 99% of my development on the mobile edition. Of course, if I didn't have a large-format tablet and use a Swype keyboard, I might change that opinion; it would be more confining on my phone, I'm sure.

Second, there are some features of the mobile edition not in the desktop version and vice versa. Not many, though.

All this notwithstanding, you can do this. However, using the desktop edition necessarily involves the cloud. Unless you just don't have internet access, that shouldn't stop you, however, as there is a free version of the cloud. The limitations are that you can have only 3 libraries at a time; you're limited to 50MB of cloud storage; and it uses the Lite version of the desktop app, rather than the Full version.

Most of my applications use 3 or fewer libraries, so if you limit yourself to one application at a time, that restriction doesn't have be a big limitation. If you use the cloud only for development, the storage should be plenty just for test data. Now, I don't recall the differences between the Lite and Full versions of the app; that could add to the limitation that features are already somewhat different between desktop and mobile editions.

But, all-in-all, I'd say you can do it just fine, if using a free version of the cloud is acceptable to you and if you can avoid the features that don't travel between the editions. I'd say to give it a whirl and see how it goes; it'll probably work fine.

[Tony G]

Bill, I'm not familiar yet with how libraries are stored in the Android file system or the Windows file system. If there is no linked external data, I would think the library file or a template could be saved in one file system, and then transported via any common method to the other enviroment where it is opened. External data would complicate that because all of the linked files would need to be transported into their equivalent relative location. In theory, some process on each side could aggregate the files, zip them, transport the zip, and then a corresponding process would unpack the files to where they belong.

So that's a lot of assumptions.
Is there any documentation for the file systems with or without linked files?
Is this something that is known to not be possible?
Or is this a big unknown?
If all of this is a huge manual work-around to avoid a couple bucks per month then I'd say the effort outweighs the cost savings. But from a technical point of view I'm curious about where things live anyway, as there could be applications for moving files around outside of what the cloud mechanism supports now or ever.

Thanks,
T

[Bill Crews]

The truth is I've forgotten what I've previously known about this. I thought there was a Memento.db file in the memento folder in internal storage (I'm on a tablet.) But I don't see one right now. I'm too lazy to check my settings to see if I moved it to another folder.

Anyway, my recollection is that all entries of all libraries are kept in a Memento.db file. What is not in there are external files (images, audio, video, bar codes, ...) and slice'n'dice settings. You should be able to copy that around and get what you're after. Links are all in there.

[Christopher Chringle]

I've finally got the desktop version to work under Linux after finding a mention of installing Oracle.

I have a database that, at the moment, has 21 back end databases. (this is an extremely detailed medical record for my family.

The free cloud will only allow 3 databases to be backed up. I was hoping to be able to place them all on my computer but since the cloud MUST be used I can't. It won't even allow me to create a fourth database even without uploading to the cloud.