Manthan

Google’s online office offering gets stronger with the rumored “PowerPoint” feature. The only feature missing, MS Access ? It wouldn’t be a bad idea to provide a “zoho” or “dabbleDB” like database solution delivered over the web for rapid application development. The solution should be easy to use and not require the users to write either PHP or DB SQL codes, just like MS Access. Should work on static HTML pages/Blogs etc, yet deliver dynamic content and capture user inputs. I put together a high level software spec (PDF link) for such a system. Here is the product abstract for WebDB

This product idea originated from the need to provide users a simple way to create web based applications, while hiding the complexity of hosting a database, writing scripting code like PHP, managing a database and the need to understand the whole HTTP/Web architecture. The product acts like a Rapid Application development tool for the web users, who want to capture data or deliver dynamic content on their WebPages. With AJAX based technologies, it is possible for the current generation of internet applications to expose API’s which can be delivered over the web. The complexity of the API’s can be hidden from the client layer and using AJAX, the data can be exchanged with the client layer without doing a page refresh.

From the user’s perspective, their work is limited to creation of the fields they want to render or capture in the WebDB admin section and generate API’s code which can be embedded in the client layer. The underlying insert/query or update is taken care by the WebDB transaction engine based on the HTTP submits.

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