Corona SDK vs Mobile web app with JQuery mobile

Getting Started Newbie Questions
#1

I know maybe I’m looking at the bad forum for this, but I’m just trying to get a grasp of different technologies and find the one that most suits my needs.

I’ve been quite attracted by Corona SDK, their demos and the stuff you can do with an elegant language like lua. However, I’m not sure if it can fit my current needs versus mobile web development with jquery mobile + html5. My requirements are the following:

1- I need to develop a mobile app for an existing e-commerce site. This app should allow to do purchases, review products, contact admins, review past purchases, etc… Basically a subset of what you can do with the full webpage. I have very low budget and time, and I need this up and running asap.

2- I don’t have any expertise on JQuery mobile nor Corona nor any kind of mobile development background, just in HTML5 and regular Jquery.

3- The app won’t need any low-level mobile API like camera.

4- High performance is not necessary.

5- If I choose to use Corona, I guess I’ll have to implement SOAP WebServices (the eCommerce site is made in ASP.NET with WCF WebServices. Does Corona or Lua provide any facilities for interoperability?)

6- Cross-platform

Given these premises… which approach will provide me the fastest way to develop what I want? Can anyone pose any related experiences?

Thank you and kind regards 

#2

I think someone got SOAP to work with Corona.  It’s really much stronger with REST.  There are XML parsers available, but JSON data maps to Lua tables much better.  By using JSON moving between Lua tables and PHP Arrays and JavaScript objects works pretty well.  I have almost no experience (well, no experience) with ASP and .NET.

Corona is of course Cross Platform.

Corona supports webViews, but because Corona is based around OpenGL, native objects like webViews and text fields don’t interact with OpenGL where most of Corona’s APIs work. 

Rob

#3

I think someone got SOAP to work with Corona.  It’s really much stronger with REST.  There are XML parsers available, but JSON data maps to Lua tables much better.  By using JSON moving between Lua tables and PHP Arrays and JavaScript objects works pretty well.  I have almost no experience (well, no experience) with ASP and .NET.

Corona is of course Cross Platform.

Corona supports webViews, but because Corona is based around OpenGL, native objects like webViews and text fields don’t interact with OpenGL where most of Corona’s APIs work. 

Rob