OK. Mash ups are nice. But what’s next? Meg Lewis, one of my Pioneers and a veteran technology architect, asked me a question that reminded me to rekindle my search for end-user “development tools.” “Apart from Microsoft Access and Excel, what tools are there for business end users to use to develop multi-user analytical and database applications?”
For my entire career, I have been advocating and praising any tools that non-technical people can use to roll up their sleeves and get things done, particularly those that can be used to develop useful applications, analysis, etc. that others could use and reconfigure. Meg believes that we must be on the cusp of these new tools. Mash ups are easy to create if you are a geek and they are fine for combining information feeds in interesting ways. But they don’t help you develop database-driven applications or analytical applications or workflow kinds of applications.
So let’s start a dialog about new tools--as I find them, I’ll blog about them. As you find them, please email me or post your nomination on my blog. We’ll get a list of these going. This week’s pre-discovery (a promising tool that isn’t yet out) is Teqlo. It’s a “platform for building event driven mash-ups on steroids with drag and drop ease.” This is a step in the right direction, but something like Coghead may be closer. And even that doesn’t look like it will be really easy to roll my own “from scratch” application and then evolve it to suit my business needs.
Please send me your nominations. My prediction: within the next year, I’ll be able to develop, deploy, and share most of the applications I need to run my distributed global, but admittedly boutique, business. And, I’m no geek! I have trouble understanding basic Excel formulas.
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Cassian,
Great to hear from you! Hope things are still going well for you at Toro. Yes, I've seen the Oracle tools in a demo as well. They look promising. Let me know when you've had a chance to try them out!
Patty
Posted by: Patty Seybold | October 28, 2006 at 02:09 PM
Dave,
Thanks for the pointer to Caspio Bridge and Caspio.com.. A great find and definitely a good example of the genre I'm looking for!
PAtty
Posted by: Patty Seybold | October 28, 2006 at 02:07 PM
Thanks Graham,
I love this marketplace concept. I have a number of clients who have availed themselves of matching coding needs to people who can do the work quickly and well.
Patty
Posted by: Patty Seybold | October 28, 2006 at 02:03 PM
Patty,
Oracle Application Express allows users to build dynamic web applications without programming. We have seen a demo and it was pretty impressive. The drawback is it only works with an Oracle database.
Posted by: Cassian Lee | October 26, 2006 at 02:30 PM
Patty,
You may find Caspio Bridge at www.caspio.com exactly what you are describing. It's been available since 2001 for SMBs as well as the enterprise.
Posted by: Dave Parsi | October 20, 2006 at 11:49 AM
Patty
Not quite 'Apps for Dummies', however Rent a Coder - www.rentacoder.com - provides an open market to match anybody looking for small pieces of customer code and anyone looking to write them.
Graham Hill
Posted by: GrahamHill | October 19, 2006 at 07:55 AM