Hi, I've been developing applications for stand alone, offline touch screen kiosks using Flash and Multidiminsional Media's "Zinc". For various reasons, I'd like to move away from Zinc and go "All Adobe".
Here's mainly what I was using Zinc for.
- Reading and writing to a local, MDB (MS Access) database file
- launching local MPG2 and WMV video files
- scheduling automatic system shutdowns/restarts
- Printing to a local printer without a Windows diolog popping up
Based on what I've learned so far, here on the quesitons I have based on the numbered list above:
- AIR can read/write to mySQL Lite. However, what about these senerios:
- The "Wilderness and Game Commission" from some state has an enormus database of all their state's flora an fauna. I ask them to export it in "mySQL Lite" format. Will I be able to use AIR to read this database? Are there other requirements for AIR's implementation of mySQL Lite?
- Suppose we have a "Registration" app on a kiosk that collects addresses and emails from users. Now we have this address/email database file written by my AIR app inside of the storage directory. What can I do with this file? With Zinc+MDB file, I needed only to hand this file over to someone with MS Acces skills to do whatever needs to be done with the data. MS Access won't open the file made by the AIR app. What are my options?
- AIR works great with MP4 (H.264) files. However, I could use very old/inexpensive hardware to run MPG2 files in Zinc (which uses directx to open an instance of Windows Media Player, sans WMP interface.) Per my testing, these same machines will not run a similar quality MP4 video. Am I overlooking another AIR option?
- Can AIR do this? Maybe with launching a BAT file?
- We often have a thermal printer in our kiosks. Zinc provided a way to print something without the pesky Windows print dialog. Does AIR provide a similar solution?
Thanks for any information addressing any of these requirements.