Few words about DaDaBIK and it's competitors

sorin

New member
Hi,

I tried to evaluate few IDEs because I need to develop a functional prototype for a multitenant marketplace. I evaluated DaDaBIK, AppGini, DbFront, VFront, dbQuikSite, PHPMaker, PHPRunner and so on. Finally my choise was PHPRunner. Your DaDaBIK enterprise version ($ 190 ) is not so rich in functionalities like is the PHPRunner profesional version ($ 499) even if DaDaBIK is more simple, more intuitive and more cheap.
Anyway DaDaBIK have a unique advantage over those IDEs: it can create apps on the web browser by the persons that are not programmers !
I think that NuBuilder is the only your competitor in this area. If you read this paper Force.com multitenant apps you can see that the main challenge of a multitenant app is the need to personalize the apps to meet the need of each customer/tenant. For that goal the provider need an app (somehow like DaDaBIK) that can be easy used by each customer/tenant (in a web browser) to personalize his app.
Maybe you can explore this area !
In this case you can create a multi tenant (or even single tenant) database structure for a complex app that can include CRM/Shop/Helpdesk/Employees/News/Forum and so on and your customers can personalize this app (or only a segment from it) for his needs.
I liked DaDaBIK but wasn't enough for my needs. Maybe in the future I will use DaDaBIK in other project.
Those words was only my ideea about the DaDaBIK and maybe you don't need such comments, anyway I wish for you and for your customers a happy new year !

Best regards,
Sorin M.
 

eugenio

Administrator
Staff member
Hello Sorin,
first of all, thanks for your feedback. We are working hard to make DaDaBIK the best No-code/Low-code Platform, both for programmers and non-programmers and I personally take into great consideration any feedback and constructive criticism.

I'll move this post to the general discussion forum, since it's not a support request.

PHPRunner was, together with DaDaBIK, one of the first PHP RAD tool for creating database web applications (DaDaBIK came out in 2001, three years earlier) and I think that the fact they are both still here, releasing updates, suggests they are both solid products.

If you compare the products, you will probably find advantages and missing features on both sides; I am not sure if comparing DaDaBIK Enterprise and PHPRunner Pro is fair: PHPRunner Pro doesn't provide a charts builder (you need PHPRunner Enterprise for that, $799) and provides only 90 days of e-mail support.

Apart from the features, I think the philosophy behind the two products is a bit different: PHPRunner is a Windows software that you typically run on your own computer as a code generator, while DaDaBIK is a Web software since its birth: you run it in any PHP environment, you don't need to generate code and maybe one day it will provide a cloud option as well. I personally prefer the DaDaBIK approach but other people might like the PHPRunner approach better.

I will read the article you shared; please fell free to share (here, on the feature requests forum or privately) the features you miss the most in DaDaBIK.

Happy new year to you too!

Best,
 

sorin

New member
Hi,

You say:
If you compare the products, you will probably find advantages and missing features on both sides; I am not sure if comparing DaDaBIK Enterprise and PHPRunner Pro is fair: PHPRunner Pro doesn't provide a charts builder (you need PHPRunner Enterprise for that, $799) and provides only 90 days of e-mail support.

Sorry, wasn't my intention to compare those products. PHPRunner was only more appropriate for my needs. Also, I appreciated very much the (web browser) DaDaBIK's approach that has many advantages (including the cloud opportunities for developers) in oposition with a desktop IDE. Basically I don't abandoned the DaDaBIK, only I chose other IDE for the current project. Anyway, I can present some features that I like to see in future in DaDaBIK:

I was able to create a multitenant prototype with the DaDaBIK but can be a great advantage if you can offer out of the box a such solution.

In a multitenant app I want and I keep the control over database structure but a very special feature can be the ability that each customer/tenant to modify/personalize/tailor the app according with its needs. In the present only one admin can change the app and any change is visible global, to all customers/tenants.

Also I think that a (maybe multitenant) complex app (CRM/Shop/HR/Jobs/Helpdesk/Knowledgebase and so one) can be a great advantage, too. In fact the BIG ideea behind the patern/template's philosophy is that for almost everyone is much more easy to see a big picture and drop elements from it than to create a big picture from disparate elements. Much more: a multitenant app can facilitate the communication between tenants and a forum that connect not only the tenants but allow to tenants to comunicate in relation with items (like orders or offers) from the app is hard to be created by a beginner but can be offered out of the box and can be a great advantage. Of course I presented only one domain (CRM/eCommerce) but there can be any other domains. If you take a look at salesforce.com or zoho.com you can see this approach in action (of course to a much higher level) and can be used as an example. You can see that both platforms have its own low-code/no-code IDE tool !

For my project was mandatory the geolocation. In the PHPRunner I have that out of the box. That was the main reason for my movement from DaDaBIK to RHPRunner. Also was important to integrate my app with CMS tools like Drupal or Joomla or to comunicate with social networking (Facebook ...)


Those are just some few ideas and aren't really features that must be implemented in the DaDaBIK.


Best regards,
Sorin
 

eugenio

Administrator
Staff member
Hello Sorin,
thanks for the additional feedback. About the geolocation, it's in the todo list; if you mean, for a record, the translation of coordinates into a google map (or similar), this is something you can probably easily do by using a custom formatting function.

About the app templates, there are already two prepackaged apps in DaDaBIK Enterprise / Platinum and we'll probably add one or two in the next major release.

About the Multi-tenant architecture, as you know there isn't an out-of-the-box solution but if you just need to (virtually) separate data, you can do it using row level custom filters. If you need a completely (virtually) separated app and a "super-admin" for all the apps it's different, probably the easiest solution is to create N distinct DaDaBIK apps and add the super-admin as an admin with same username and password in all the apps but I am not sue it is what you want. I know quite well the zoho solution, I don't know if and how they provide a Multi-tenant solution for all their products, though.


Best,
 
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