How no-code platforms are democratizing data science and software development
If my mom decides to create an online shop for her pastries today, she can! She can have a beautiful online store with all her products and their images up and running. She can even connect it to her bank account, all in less than 1 hour. She doesn’t even need a computer, she can do it all on her phone.
If you had read this 20 years ago, you would’ve laughed. Today, anyone with no knowledge of software development or IT for that matter can create beautiful websites, big e-commerce marketplaces, or even mobile applications with just a few clicks, thanks to no-code platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Bubble.
You don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
Albert Einstein
You can summarise the evolution of the software industry in one word: Easier. All the successful products that you use every day, are just the easier versions of the products that you used yesterday.
Collaborating online on a Google doc is so much easier than sending/receiving word documents back and forth. Installing Zoom is so much easier than setting up a complex Cisco VOIP system for all your teams. Searching for the desired Youtube clip is so much easier than having to watch TV at a specific time, and scrolling down on Tiktok is so much easier than watching Youtube videos!
An easier product will always replace a more complex product as the primary solution for the majority of its users. Everything (and I mean “everything”) we created so far, is a transformation of something else that we either created or found in the world. Creation or invention is not to create something from 0, it is to create something that is much much better than existing solutions.
Even if you look at software development itself, almost all the advancements of the past 30 years can be described like this: We made development much easier and now we can build more powerful products and scale much faster, in less time.
The no-code industry has grown 10 times in the past 5 years alone, also the rise of Covid-19 and remote working accelerated this growth tremendously.
Data is without a doubt the core of every software. So what about the database industry? How did databases evolve in the world of no-code developers, citizen developers, and business users?
Unfortunately, the majority of businesses choose these two options:
- They use spreadsheets as their database, which is a huge step backward.
- They use software builder platforms that automatically created a database for them, which means for example the database design of a CRM for a “large factory” is the same as a “restaurant”.
These options are far from ideal, but they were easy enough for almost all businesses.
Spreadsheets are not databases!
I don’t believe I have to say this, but apparently, I do! It’s like explaining to someone that “no means no”! Almost every business collaborates and organizes at least a portion of its data in various spreadsheets. Is that really wrong? Yes. Here’s why:
No real access management and security control:
Same as with all file-based design systems, spreadsheets are huge security risks. If someone had access to a spreadsheet once, nothing can stop them from duplicating it and keeping it forever.
Spreadsheets don’t have dynamic and limited-level access management options that databases can provide and they lack basic security protocols. And that’s ok because they were not designed to be databases in the first place but as worksheets!
The danger of copying & paste:
The ability to freely copy and paste what you want in a spreadsheet is great, but that also means you will lose the “origin of data” (or the single source of truth, if you will), and also you most probably end up with multiple copies and duplications, which is neither efficient nor safe.
When you lose the origin and goal of each data point, it becomes so much harder to connect them and understand them. So it quickly can become a big pile of meaningless entries.
No database design, no scale:
Spreadsheets may work for small use cases, but never for serious scalable work. The cost of maintenance of a tool created with spreadsheets can become too much as you scale.
Arguably creating relations in spreadsheets is so much harder than designing a full database and it’s also far riskier. It’s like filling your bath with a cup. It’s might get done, but the water will be too cold by the time you can use it.
Making databases without anyone even noticing it!
Creating a database is too hard and too boring for most people, especially business users. On the other hand, people love creating and customizing what they can see and feel; if it’s easy enough. That’s what we should show people, not boring data tables, but the end results, what they can be, and how they can be used. That’s the magic of Formaloo Data OS.
So by helping business users design and create their own customized tools, that they can see and feel, we’re actually designing and building a full database automatically for them!
Creating a database this way can be super easy. Same as when you play with legos, you just need to put the “building blocks” together and viola, you will have exactly what you want.
A database is just a structure, it’s useless if it cannot be used easily. So the key is not only to create a database but to create customizable tools on top of it as well.
We can break it down into three main steps:
In these three steps, the end-users and our teams truly interact with our database. They are many no-code tools that anyone can use to connect these three steps together and create beautiful yet powerful applications. Here are some of the best ones in every category that you can use:
How to create apps powered with your data
One of the biggest problems that companies nowadays are facing, is that every business is unique, and they need unique tools to operate and to be more efficient. Also, they need to collaborate. especially when we are talking about the rise of remote work or the rise of hybrid work. Collaboration is the key here.
The world need more software today that developers could ever possibly build
It’s true, Software is eating the world, but not everyone would be a developer, Nor they should!
Development is hard and expensive. I have seen many big companies wasting millions of dollars on their software development because they feel no SaaS can meet their needs. But at the same time, they didn’t have the expertise of creating software themselves.
Some visionary companies found another way, a new perspective:
Instead of offering our customers the solution, what if we offered them the right tools so they could create their own unique solutions?
The idea of Formaloo, which I work on, is something similar: Data is without a doubt the core of every software, so working with data should be so easy that “anyone” can be a developer and a data scientist without any training necessary.
Formaloo simplifies the creation of your own solution with a few essentials: At its core, Formaloo is a database management system that anyone can easily add interfaces on top of it. When you create a formaloo, a database, a business logic, and a full UI connected to it are created for you, which looks like this under the hood:
This famous architecture, MVC, brings you the powerhouse you need to create any scalable apps as you wish without having to worry about data storage and connections or even building UI and security components! Bear in mind all of this happens automatically and without any coding, again just by dragging and dropping some lego pieces and building blocks.
Now anyone can create powerful relational databases and connect building blocks such as Forms, Tables, Lists, Kanbans, Grids, Charts, Reports, Widgets, Wizards & many more to build their perfect application in minutes, not months.
The AppUI is a customizable block-based interface on top of your database. You can drag and drop components and integrate and customize them however you want. The most popular use cases are HR portals, customer portals, Custom CRMs, dynamic dashboards, BI reports, and branded directories.
The UI, the business logic, and the design of the database are all 100% customizable so you can create exactly what you wish and use it instantly. You can collaborate with your team and share your apps with teammates, customers, and partners. Advance access management gives you total control over what data each user can access, and which actions they can take.
Conclusion
Same as when the software design started, we shouldn’t invent stuff and try to make it dynamic, there are many approaches that we can follow to achieve what we need.
Every software has many essential parts. What if we take these essential parts, make them small & simple (without sacrificing their power), and turn them into “ready-to-deploy tools”? let’s call them legos!
This way, you can modify these tools based on your requirements, connect them with other tools, and create your unique customized software.
This process should be both easy and automatic for this to work.
Thank you for reading this post, I would love to hear your feedback and your experiences regarding this post. If you want to contact me or ask me any questions, here is my LinkedIn, I would be happy to hear from you.
