It is not necessary to install WindowsProg Bridge Server in Windows, TFS or Database Server you want to explore. It can be installed on any Windows client machine in the same network as the Windows, TFS or Database Server you would like to explore.
Our iOS/Android Prog series applications requires a Bridge Server to be installed in Windows Machine to process the request made by iOS devices. The Bridge Server is the one stop communication point for Windows, Team Foundation Server and Database Servers. WindowsProg Bridge Server comes with a backoffice application to configure and control the access to Bridge Server. It is possible to use SSL with WindowsProg Bridge Server. So that iOS/Android devices on 3G network can also communicate with WindowsProg Bridge Server Securely.
The first important reason is security. For eg. your database server is inside corporate internal network and it is not exposed to public internet but you want to access the database server on the go. Here you can only expose WindowsProg Bridge Server system port 12345 to the public internet with ssl and you can securely access the database server.
The set of services exposed by windows applications are limited but they provide a framework for accessing rich set of hidden features. It is not possible to access the hidden features directly from iOS/Android device. But you can use the application framework inside windows to access the rich set of feature. This is what WindowsProg Bridge Server excel. It uses the application specific framework to access the rich set of features and delivers it to the iOS devices easily.
Basically iOS/Android devices comes with limited set of resources (memory, process power, etc.). So doing all the process at the iOS devices is not a right choice since various applications compete each other for resource utilization. On the other hand real PCS nowadays has lots of resources and processing power. So WindowsProg Bridge Server does all the processing in the PC and only send data what is required to display in the iOS device.
When a new version of Database, TFS or any other application is released, the api's of the applications are made available immediately. This makes it possible for us to upgrade the WindowsProg Bridge Server without making changes in the iOS/Android applications.
