6 ms·

I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e

I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do. Google Spreadsheets actually goes a long way (I've done some stuff using the IF function etc. in it), but obviously has its limits. So combining it with Python sounds interesting. Not sure if it's what I'm looking for, but I'll check it out.

tyingq 10y ago
Quickbase does that, but the pricing model doesn't work well for all use cases. Edit: DabbleDB was awesome, and easier to learn than quickbase. But Twitter acquihired them and shut it down.
simonw 10y ago
Have you seen AirTable? It's definitely the best modern alternative to Access I've seen - easy to create tables, great web UI and a phenomenal iOS mobile app. https://www.airtable.com https://www.airtable.com
- f_allwein 10y ago
  thanks, did not know this.
- startupdiscuss 10y ago
  It is the fastest growing productivity app of the year (I read somewhere based on a metric I cannot recall). I didn't realize they had an API. I just looked it up and the documentation is so good it makes me tear up. The trick with the documentation is that it lets you pick one of your own databases and it then makes all the examples relevant to that database! Why doesn't everyone do that?
  - simonw 10y ago
    I'm actually a bit disappointed by their API as it stands at the moment. Say for example you want to retrieve a record with a bunch of nested records in one go. Currently you have to do that by pulling the first record, then looping through the array of nested IDs for the other records and retrieving each of them in turn. I want to be able to say "get me back record 56 and all of the linked records in a single request". I ended up having to iterate over their "fetch all records of type X" endpoints and then gluing the data back together in-memory, which is a pretty nasty workaround.
    - howsta 10y ago
      Cofounder of Airtable here, I hear you and that's on the roadmap :).
      - phillc73 10y ago
        Could you spend a couple of minutes to describe the advantages of Airtable over Fieldbook or Ragic? I've been gripped by indecision regarding which tool to use, and hence use none of them.
        howsta 10y ago
        To be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time using Fieldbook or Ragic. That being said, we spend an insane amount of time/effort making sure that Airtable delivers a first-class product experience. In fact, the first couple years of Airtable's existence involved myself and my cofounder Andrew--who previously PMed the redesign of Google Maps--building countless prototype variants to get the UX right, doing a literal hundred user studies with people from all sorts of industries/roles to understand how the full range of how they used spreadsheets, databases, and other products, and researching the prior art by talking to the creators of past products in the space (i.e. MS Access, Excel, Coghead, Podio, Dabbledb, etc). We think Airtable is to spreadsheets/Access/Filemaker what Slack is to email (and fwiw, Slack itself uses Airtable http://bit.ly/2m58l4U http://bit.ly/2m58l4U ). Specifically, our product offers the following (which to my knowledge Ragic/Fieldbook do not): x IMO a much more intuitive design x Native Android, iPhone, & iPad apps, as well as an electron desktop app ( airtable.com/downloads ) x Ability to create multiple views on the same table, each of which preserves its own filter/sort/visibility settings Multiple view types, including grid, grouped records, calendar, kanban, public forms, and gallery: http://bit.ly/2ky3WLB http://bit.ly/2ky3WLB . x Inline collaboration i.e. @mentions in text fields, record-level comments x Many more useful field types x Visual revision history and snapshots x More integrations, such as with Zapier (see Zapier's writeups http://bit.ly/2lfGr79 http://bit.ly/2lfGr79 http://bit.ly/2l3dZqG http://bit.ly/2l3dZqG ), Slack, native calendars via an iCal feed, and Dropbox/Box/Gdrive/Evernote. x Greater capacity and smoother performance. x Full realtime sync for all changes, including schema modifications. x Lots of little things, like the ability to perform date calculations relative to today (i.e. a filtered view or formula that shows all projects due within 7 days from today and is automatically updated as time goes by), private share-links and embeds to give people access to a read-only view of Airtable without making them sign up for an account, inline document previews (e.g. view a text-copyable inline version of a .DOCX file) Over 30,000 organizations already use Airtable--this includes tech cos like Airbnb, Box, Wework, and Tesla; non-tech cos like Atlantic Records and Penguin Randomhouse; educational institutions like CMU, Rice, and Stanford. We're growing our team and continuously releasing new enhancements to improve the product experience for all users.
- wffurr 10y ago
  Why are the row limits so tight?! 1200 rows for the free tier, and only 5000 rows for the first paid tier! That's crazy low, given that Google Sheets gives you 200,000 cells, or 10,000 20-column rows, for free. EDIT: That was from 2009. The current limit is 2,000,000 cells per sheet: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603?hl=en https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603?hl=en
  - j_s 10y ago
    Probably because they are in business to make money? Customers whose first priority is cost usually aren't good customers.
    - rattray 10y ago
      Right, but even their more expensive paid plan has a 50k row limit, which is low enough to preclude whole classes of applications. They do claim a "custom number" of rows in their "contact us for pricing" plan, but the 50k number suggests that anything higher than that would have serious perf downsides with their current architecture.
      - mthoms 10y ago
        I read somewhere that AirTable is deliberately only targeting "human scale" data use cases.
    - hueving 10y ago
      That's a daft statement. Every customer cares about cost. The only difference is the price points. If that saying meant anything meaningful, Walmart, Safeway, Ford, etc would not exist. I think what you meant to say was, "don't target customers not willing to pay enough for a profit margin." Much less catchy, but at least it's not bullshit.
      - j_s 10y ago
        I said: "Customers whose first priority is cost" (emphasis added) You said: "Every customer cares about cost" There's a world of difference right there! Appreciate you taking the time to comment but starting with "That's a daft statement" and ending with "bullshit", throwing in "I think what you want to say" for good measure? I must have hit a sore spot!
- vijayr 10y ago
  Is there a downloadable version of this, paid or free?
  - simonw 10y ago
    No, it's entirely cloud based. You can install their iOS and Android apps but they'll only work if you have an internet connection.
  - howsta 10y ago
    In addition to native mobile apps, we do have a desktop app. It does require internet connectivity though (similar to Slack's app, it's built on electron). Airtable.com/downloads
buildbuildbuild 10y ago
Salesforce often ends up filling this gap in organizations that can afford it, but often results in a technical debt of layman-designed schemas persisting long into production. (cleaning up or directly working with SF data is an expensive nightmare in my experience even post-Heroku acquisition) You are correct that a modern MS Access alternative would certainly find its market.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  For simple needs Salesforce isn't even that expensive, we have around ~38 "App Cloud" licenses - that adds up to $950/mo to not deal with data scattered everywhere, not needing to waste my time designing a full CRUD app with security, managing a database server, etc. It helps to have an experienced Salesforce admin though, I love the "citizen developer" that Salesforce always preaches but you can run into a mess if you don't think your data model through like any other database. > cleaning up or directly working with SF data is an expensive nightmare in my experience even post-Heroku acquisition Plenty of decent sync products to make this not stink. We happily pay for DBAmp every year to keep all our data on-site so we can expose it to other users and to keep a backup of pruned data.
  - dzhiurgis 10y ago
    Salesforce sells a lot of "best practices" that sometimes aren't, but so many young developers(and even architects) buy into. You are leaving out storage costs. There's a minimum record size and then per licence billing, something like $250/GB/month. If anyone needs some info/consulting - PM me via email in profile.
    - snuxoll 10y ago
      Storage costs are certainly something to be weary of, and something I have always hone through great efforts to minimize. We have just over 5GB of total storage in our org and are only using ~45MB after a year because we planned out model around both storage efficiency and a sane data model. You don't use fully normalized database designs in Salesforce if you can avoid it.
PhilipRawson 10y ago
Perhaps Bubble is close to what you may be looking for: https://bubble.is https://bubble.is I know several people using this as a quick backend database solution since they make it so easy to interact with data and expose a GET and POST API.
ghostly_s 10y ago
Microsoft has a new suite of web-based tools called Sway, PowerApps, Flow and Dynamics365. I gather this are trying to meet this need...somewhere in there?
arthurfm 10y ago
I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications Google App Maker? https://blog.google/products/g-suite/customize-your-g-suite-experience-app-maker-and-recommended-apps/ https://blog.google/products/g-suite/customize-your-g-suite-...
dragonwriter 10y ago
> I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do. Isn't the tool that does what MS Access used to do, and that is available now, called "MS Access"?
beojan 10y ago
MS Access hasn't gone anywhere, why not use it?

tyingq 10y ago

Quickbase does that, but the pricing model doesn't work well for all use cases. Edit: DabbleDB was awesome, and easier to learn than quickbase. But Twitter acquihired them and shut it down.

simonw 10y ago

Have you seen AirTable? It's definitely the best modern alternative to Access I've seen - easy to create tables, great web UI and a phenomenal iOS mobile app. https://www.airtable.com https://www.airtable.com

f_allwein 10y ago
thanks, did not know this.
startupdiscuss 10y ago
It is the fastest growing productivity app of the year (I read somewhere based on a metric I cannot recall). I didn't realize they had an API. I just looked it up and the documentation is so good it makes me tear up. The trick with the documentation is that it lets you pick one of your own databases and it then makes all the examples relevant to that database! Why doesn't everyone do that?
- simonw 10y ago
  I'm actually a bit disappointed by their API as it stands at the moment. Say for example you want to retrieve a record with a bunch of nested records in one go. Currently you have to do that by pulling the first record, then looping through the array of nested IDs for the other records and retrieving each of them in turn. I want to be able to say "get me back record 56 and all of the linked records in a single request". I ended up having to iterate over their "fetch all records of type X" endpoints and then gluing the data back together in-memory, which is a pretty nasty workaround.
  - howsta 10y ago
    Cofounder of Airtable here, I hear you and that's on the roadmap :).
    - phillc73 10y ago
      Could you spend a couple of minutes to describe the advantages of Airtable over Fieldbook or Ragic? I've been gripped by indecision regarding which tool to use, and hence use none of them.
      - howsta 10y ago
        To be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time using Fieldbook or Ragic. That being said, we spend an insane amount of time/effort making sure that Airtable delivers a first-class product experience. In fact, the first couple years of Airtable's existence involved myself and my cofounder Andrew--who previously PMed the redesign of Google Maps--building countless prototype variants to get the UX right, doing a literal hundred user studies with people from all sorts of industries/roles to understand how the full range of how they used spreadsheets, databases, and other products, and researching the prior art by talking to the creators of past products in the space (i.e. MS Access, Excel, Coghead, Podio, Dabbledb, etc). We think Airtable is to spreadsheets/Access/Filemaker what Slack is to email (and fwiw, Slack itself uses Airtable http://bit.ly/2m58l4U http://bit.ly/2m58l4U ). Specifically, our product offers the following (which to my knowledge Ragic/Fieldbook do not): x IMO a much more intuitive design x Native Android, iPhone, & iPad apps, as well as an electron desktop app ( airtable.com/downloads ) x Ability to create multiple views on the same table, each of which preserves its own filter/sort/visibility settings Multiple view types, including grid, grouped records, calendar, kanban, public forms, and gallery: http://bit.ly/2ky3WLB http://bit.ly/2ky3WLB . x Inline collaboration i.e. @mentions in text fields, record-level comments x Many more useful field types x Visual revision history and snapshots x More integrations, such as with Zapier (see Zapier's writeups http://bit.ly/2lfGr79 http://bit.ly/2lfGr79 http://bit.ly/2l3dZqG http://bit.ly/2l3dZqG ), Slack, native calendars via an iCal feed, and Dropbox/Box/Gdrive/Evernote. x Greater capacity and smoother performance. x Full realtime sync for all changes, including schema modifications. x Lots of little things, like the ability to perform date calculations relative to today (i.e. a filtered view or formula that shows all projects due within 7 days from today and is automatically updated as time goes by), private share-links and embeds to give people access to a read-only view of Airtable without making them sign up for an account, inline document previews (e.g. view a text-copyable inline version of a .DOCX file) Over 30,000 organizations already use Airtable--this includes tech cos like Airbnb, Box, Wework, and Tesla; non-tech cos like Atlantic Records and Penguin Randomhouse; educational institutions like CMU, Rice, and Stanford. We're growing our team and continuously releasing new enhancements to improve the product experience for all users.
wffurr 10y ago
Why are the row limits so tight?! 1200 rows for the free tier, and only 5000 rows for the first paid tier! That's crazy low, given that Google Sheets gives you 200,000 cells, or 10,000 20-column rows, for free. EDIT: That was from 2009. The current limit is 2,000,000 cells per sheet: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603?hl=en https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603?hl=en
- j_s 10y ago
  Probably because they are in business to make money? Customers whose first priority is cost usually aren't good customers.
  - rattray 10y ago
    Right, but even their more expensive paid plan has a 50k row limit, which is low enough to preclude whole classes of applications. They do claim a "custom number" of rows in their "contact us for pricing" plan, but the 50k number suggests that anything higher than that would have serious perf downsides with their current architecture.
    - mthoms 10y ago
      I read somewhere that AirTable is deliberately only targeting "human scale" data use cases.
  - hueving 10y ago
    That's a daft statement. Every customer cares about cost. The only difference is the price points. If that saying meant anything meaningful, Walmart, Safeway, Ford, etc would not exist. I think what you meant to say was, "don't target customers not willing to pay enough for a profit margin." Much less catchy, but at least it's not bullshit.
    - j_s 10y ago
      I said: "Customers whose first priority is cost" (emphasis added) You said: "Every customer cares about cost" There's a world of difference right there! Appreciate you taking the time to comment but starting with "That's a daft statement" and ending with "bullshit", throwing in "I think what you want to say" for good measure? I must have hit a sore spot!
vijayr 10y ago
Is there a downloadable version of this, paid or free?
- simonw 10y ago
  No, it's entirely cloud based. You can install their iOS and Android apps but they'll only work if you have an internet connection.
- howsta 10y ago
  In addition to native mobile apps, we do have a desktop app. It does require internet connectivity though (similar to Slack's app, it's built on electron). Airtable.com/downloads

buildbuildbuild 10y ago

Salesforce often ends up filling this gap in organizations that can afford it, but often results in a technical debt of layman-designed schemas persisting long into production. (cleaning up or directly working with SF data is an expensive nightmare in my experience even post-Heroku acquisition) You are correct that a modern MS Access alternative would certainly find its market.

snuxoll 10y ago
For simple needs Salesforce isn't even that expensive, we have around ~38 "App Cloud" licenses - that adds up to $950/mo to not deal with data scattered everywhere, not needing to waste my time designing a full CRUD app with security, managing a database server, etc. It helps to have an experienced Salesforce admin though, I love the "citizen developer" that Salesforce always preaches but you can run into a mess if you don't think your data model through like any other database. > cleaning up or directly working with SF data is an expensive nightmare in my experience even post-Heroku acquisition Plenty of decent sync products to make this not stink. We happily pay for DBAmp every year to keep all our data on-site so we can expose it to other users and to keep a backup of pruned data.
- dzhiurgis 10y ago
  Salesforce sells a lot of "best practices" that sometimes aren't, but so many young developers(and even architects) buy into. You are leaving out storage costs. There's a minimum record size and then per licence billing, something like $250/GB/month. If anyone needs some info/consulting - PM me via email in profile.
  - snuxoll 10y ago
    Storage costs are certainly something to be weary of, and something I have always hone through great efforts to minimize. We have just over 5GB of total storage in our org and are only using ~45MB after a year because we planned out model around both storage efficiency and a sane data model. You don't use fully normalized database designs in Salesforce if you can avoid it.

PhilipRawson 10y ago

Perhaps Bubble is close to what you may be looking for: https://bubble.is https://bubble.is I know several people using this as a quick backend database solution since they make it so easy to interact with data and expose a GET and POST API.

ghostly_s 10y ago

Microsoft has a new suite of web-based tools called Sway, PowerApps, Flow and Dynamics365. I gather this are trying to meet this need...somewhere in there?

arthurfm 10y ago

I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications Google App Maker? https://blog.google/products/g-suite/customize-your-g-suite-experience-app-maker-and-recommended-apps/ https://blog.google/products/g-suite/customize-your-g-suite-...

dragonwriter 10y ago

> I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do. Isn't the tool that does what MS Access used to do, and that is available now, called "MS Access"?

beojan 10y ago

MS Access hasn't gone anywhere, why not use it?