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We have built an electronic ticketing system using plain PHP and MySQL. After learning this system needs to be accessed on portable Android devices we hired an app developer to build us a simple app.

What is interesting is the app (from screenshots) functions almost identical to the web system we created. The app developer said after it's completed it will not rely on our system but communicate directly with the database. In the future if we update our PHP system he said we can update the app.

I'm just now learning how to develop Android apps. From what the app developer is saying it appears he's simply translating (compiling?) our code into an app. Is this possible? I'm aware there's a new method in building Android apps with PHP, but I seriously doubt he's doing that. Am I missing something, or did we just waste funds when we could have done something ourselves?

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It isn't possible to run a PHP application on an Android device, no. However it could be running a lightweight browser inside an app, which accesses your website. Try making a small modification to your live site and then access the site again from your mobile device, to see if it changes.

The app developer said after it's completed it will not rely on our system but communicate directly with the database.

You don't want to communicate directly with the database - that sounds like it would require MySQL to be left open to the internet. That's not ideal from a security perspective (I don't know if Android has the drivers for it anyway). Instead, you should run an AJAX web front end and send commands (but not SQL commands) to the database that way, cleaning/untainting the input data thoroughly. Indeed, maybe that is what he is referring to?

or did we just waste funds when we could have done something ourselves?

It's difficult to answer that. If you discover something useful as a result of employing him, perhaps it was worthwhile? Of course, this illustrates that it is important to know the technical environment thoroughly when hiring someone, and perhaps when you hire someone in the future you'll discuss their technical solution prior to implementation. If you decide to pull out at that stage, pay them for the R&D and the technical spec, and do it yourself.

In any case, why wonder about it? As part of completing this item of work, ask for technical details of his implementation on both the mobile and server side. And of course don't forget to ask for the source code - hopefully it was written into the contract that you own this intellectual property.

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Thanks halfer, and yes it's a part of the contract that we own the source code. That was one of the requirements from the beginning, so I could look at the code later.
Great stuff. Do let me know what you find out, on this thread.

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