Who else wants to be chosen by Obama Team?

TechCrunch posted one interesting article Kevin Merritt wrote (CEO and founder of blist), on how blist was used in Obama-Biden Transition, to disclose the names of donors to the transition project. Congratulations to Kevin as his product was chosen by Obama team over the competing services.

What I want to clear up is how other web-based products would handle this, in case the choice was made in favor of products I review in my blog.

So I exported data from Obama-Biden-Donor-List and tried to test following services capibility to handle it.

I managed to import the data in 6 copy/paste shots, importing 10 000 records each time. This is how it looks:


I have such an impression that Dabble DB works a way slower with such data volume. At least as I tried to navigate within the table. Unfortunately Dabble DB doesn’t have simple ways for Obama Team to insert the list in their blog. To implement this they should have used Dabble DB JavaScript API.

There was no problem importing data in one step. I used the file I’ve got exporting data from blist. This is the result:


In TeamDesk I don’t see any simple way to display the list of people who donated thorough their site as well. The developer offers to use API for this.

No luck with Zoho Creator. There was no way to check whether Obama Team could use Zoho Creator as the system couldn’t parse the app correctly through import file:


But another Zoho product - DB & Reports gives the opportunity to do that. This is what I’ve got:


This product also has built in tools for publishing the data through your blog or web site.

Its Coghead turn now to prove its value. This is how the result of data import looks:


To integrate results in your own site one can use Coglets.

If Obama Team choice was TrackVia the result of data importing would look like this:


Using "Publish this view" feature one can display it on his site.

If use LongJump this is the look of data within the system:


As I haven’t found in LongJump simple means to display the list on my site, I suppose we should use API within this program as well.

Unfortunately I couldn’t check how to implement this in QuickBase for my trial has already expired.

Anyway, I think each vendor won’t mind to be chosen by Obama Team and definitely each service provider would improve the system and make needed changes to satisfy their requirements.

Nobody knows what triggered the decision in favor of blist or it was just a random choice of the system, but that must be huge for the vendor.

I can hardly imagine any better promotion for the product.

What's the user licensing verge of TrackVia?

I keep on clearing up peculiarities of how web-based programs can serve best to common users and what major vendors offer.

So, lets check how TrackVia handles unlimited users issue? I mean if adding new users smatrly principle works.

Check out the pricing in the first place. Each user with the permission to access the database is considered as Licensed User.

If you need to grant access for many users in TrackVia two things will be of help here:

Website Forms – this feature allows you to create public form that adds data to your database.

TrackVia allows generating HTML for a web form, and you can copy and paste it into your web page using your favorite HTML editor. This is how the results will look like:


If you want to quit here, you can – you already have a fully-functioning public TrackVia form that adds all new records in your database. You can even improve your form’s appearance and functionality if you are familiar with HTML script, and here you can specify how.

Published views – this feature allows you to make views available to the general public: people who are not TrackVia users and who aren't logged in to TrackVia. You can do this by publishing the view into an existing web page, or by linking to or sharing a public URL. This is how it looks:


Published views do not allows modifying or viewing particular record data, but they do have working sort and pagination (results per page) links and will always show up-to-date information from your TrackVia database.

Conclusions:

TrackVia gives you good opportunities to organize public access to your database. The thing is your needs just have to fit the scope of viewing and adding the records to the database.

Get through with unlimited users in Coghead

Is the statement "unlimited users" really true for some web-based services out there? And what is meant by this in Coghead?

Trying to figure out how this can be done and the peculiarities of the implementation I came across the following:

Actually, Coghead offers 2 ways for licensing an unlimited user’s access, that can really add to the value of your app. Here it is what is that all about and how it can be implemented in real-life case:

Coglets

A Coglet allows you to take a piece of Application and place it in your Web page or Google Gadget. Coglets can also be configured to allow anonymous users to save their information as a record in your Coghead Application without having to be invited to your Account.

Coghead API

Coghead provided an API that enables you to consume and publish data to your Coghead applications programmatically. Using that API, you can use your Coghead applications to power rich, dynamic websites and even integrate into other applications.

It is also necessary to buy Limited User Option Pack ($50/mo) which supports an unlimited number of users to access data via Coglets or API-based applications.

Conclusion:

This is a pretty good and comparably not that expansive solution to secure an unlimited users access to your application. If the other Coghead functionality features seem to satisfy your needs, of course.

Contradictions of Caspio approach to support unlimited users

Check out Caspio Bridge approach to users licensing policy. The good news is Caspio Bridge doesn’t restrict the quantity of users (anonymous or authenticated). You can review the pricing here.

There is a "but" though..

On the other hand Caspio Bridge doesn’t have any build-in tools to work with authenticated users. Yes, there are some mechanisms to tune web user authentication and basic record level security but I think that won’t suffice for real-life app roll out, I mean with complex multi level access, not only to records, but fields as well.

Maybe everything can be programmed on the level of specific data pages, but my point is the flexibility of such a system will be limited, let alone the difficulties of its support.

My impression is Caspio Bridge is oriented on such apps: The main part is developed as a front end (it can be any listing, from simple list of the company news/announces to real estate listing with search capability, pictures and other stuff) and with one or several backends for different categories of users which manage this list. You can check it yourself taking a look at the ready-made applications.

Quantity, quality and how TeamDesk combines it

After the decision to stick with definite service the first thing we are interested in is, of course, pricing and the quantity of users one can add for the given price.

I must say that’s quite a task to find the best quality-price ratio.

It takes time, but I’ll try to spare you some, giving a brief overview of what major vendors offer.

It won’t be out of place to clear up the pricing policy and what to expect from the service in further app roll out.

In TeamDesk each user with an access to the app is considered as licensed user. I've checked the pricing policy as well.

So, if you want to grant data access for many users (without perviousely specified quantity) TeamDesk suggests such options:

Web-to-record - allows generating a HTML code for any form and from any table, and displaying it on your web site or using for data input in the app (for example, you can create different variants of feedback/contact form). This is how it works on Wine Tracker app example from TeamDesk Application Library.


Let's assume I wanna create a public form for adding new wine items into my collection. First of all I should create the form with the fields I want to enter and tune web-to-record for it:


After that by pressing Generate HTML button you get a code, which you can use for adding records into table.


If you are concerned about privacy, but you don’t want to pay for SSL certificate, use resource of your app and display this web-to-record form right there.


This is how it functions in reality:


Of course, you can color it and add different amenities (header/footer/images) in any HTML editor.

If web-to-record is not enough, there is more sophisticated variant of doing this - SOAP API. This is the set of interfaces which allow you to get and modify your app data. This method gives you an opportunity to implement whatever you want – but it requires programming skills.

Here is an example of its implementation through javascript in a given app. For those who want to get even more advanced variant on .NET there is another way to implement this.

Conclusions

TeamDesk has tools for work organization of unlimited number of users. The developers thought it out, well, that’s good. What is not that good is the fact it requires the basics of HTML or programming knowledge. Personally I don’t like it that much, and this is exactly WHY.

My point is TeamDesk developers should think it over how to grant unlimited users access without any programming skills.

Adding new users smartly

Utilizing a web-based system sooner or later you’ll have to decide how many additional licenses you need, and how many you can actually afford to buy.

I guess this issue concerns many people out there, especially now, in times of all this mess with a financial crisis and stuff. So it won’t be out of place to check which vendors offer solutions which are not too heavy for the wallet.

Oftentimes the user of the service has many clients and wants to grant them access to the web-database as well, but can’t afford buying the same quantity of licenses or there is simply no opportunity for interaction when the prospect can't be registered in the system in advance.

Check out my findings in upcoming posts and save some time choosing the most appropriate option.