Vivaldi FAQ

No coding required! If you know a little bit of javascript, jQuery, or CSS, you can do some extra special things. But to just build an application with Vivaldi, no coding is required! We have wizards to help with the tricky parts, like being able to send a user from one form to another, or show a dropdown box when you want users to see a list of values from a reference table.

• MySQL version 5.4 or higher
• A web server that supports PHP 5.3 or higher with these extensions enabled:
  • mysqli - php_mysqli.dll (common)
  • openssl - php_openssl.dll (common)

Definitely. Vivaldi has a huge amount of functionality available right away, and draws upon a rich set of web technologies to give you and your end users a modern experience. If you have experience with jQuery, javascript, CSS, and SQL you can define sophisticated behavior within Vivaldi without all of the work to define create/read/update/delete (CRUD) interactions for every form. It leaves you to focus on those areas that might be very unique to your application, that require a special HTML/PHP page, or very specific behavior.

When you design a form with Vivaldi, it actually lives as a form definition in your MySQL database, so it can be changed at any time by an authorized person using Vivaldi's Form Designer, and those design changes will appear the next time a user visits that form. There is no need to manage form php files, edit files, or worry about deploying form changes. As you add or change form designs, it will be available to all users in your application.

Presently we only support MySQL. If you're interested in a different database, let us know!

Vivaldi comes delivered with a super administrator role and user. Other than that, you are free to create roles, assign users to them, and then assign what menu items and forms each role is permitted to work with. Users have a unique, secure login when you create their accounts. They receive an email with the username and password. You can disable users and roles at any time.

Step 1: Migrate your Microsoft Access database to MySQL

Choosing a MySQL host

You have many options when it comes to choosing where to host your MySQL database.  We've listed a few here to help you get started.

• Your current web host - if you have a website currently you likely have free MySQL databases included.  1&1, GoDaddy, InMotion, and others have low-cost packages with MySQL included.
• A cloud host - Amazon RDS, Microsoft Azure, Google, or others.  You'll pay by the cpu time your database uses, a good "pay as you grow" option.
• Your corporate IT - if you are in a large company, you'll likely have some MySQL servers around.  Whether you can get access to one to manage your own database is going to depend on your IT organization.  But always worth  a try!
• Your own server - if it's just for your internal network, you can use a tool like XAMPP to stand up a complete MySQL and web server with very little effort or know-how. Your machine would need to be available (up) for as much time per day as other users need to access it.

Moving your tables to MySQL

Free tools like Bullzip to create a new MySQL database and automaticaly copy your data too.

Creating MySQL views from your Access queries

In MySQL, "views" and the equivalent of "queries" in Accesss. Most queries can be recreated by copying and pasting the SQL from Access into MySQL Workbench. Just be sure to create them in order - any queries that reference other queries should be created last.

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Step 2: Create Your Web Application using Your New MySQL Database

• Copy the Vivaldi files to your web server directory
• Connect Vivaldi to the database (editing 4 lines of text)
• Use Vivaldi to visuallly design the forms needed to view/add/edit/delete records without any coding.  See all of Vivaldi's amazing features >>
• Use Vivaldi to manage user security, role assignments, and dynamic menus

You can definitely try Vivaldi with our demo site, however we can't send along the actual product as the code is not compiled or locked down.

Your Vivaldi purchase includes lifetime support via email, and when coordinated in advance, phone or web conference.

Lifetime updates are included with your license, and there are no recurring costs once you pay the initial software license fee. Upgrades are "at your own" risk, in that you should thoroughly test an upgrade on a dedicated test instance of Vivaldi first. This can be as simple as a separate folder with a duplicate installation of Vivaldi that you use to test upgrades, or by taking a backup of your Vivaldi directories before applying your upgrade.