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Form to DB

formtodb.com

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Re: Form to DB

#21

Post by dvdhsu »

nextworddev wrote: post #14

As a side note I found retool to be the most prohibitively expensive out of 6-7 solutions I was researching for “low code admin app builder” ecosystem.

Hm, sorry you found us to be expensive. Two notes:

* Forms (ie the product here) is free.

* We’ve always aimed to build a sustainable business where we charge reasonable prices and can guarantee we’ll stay in business ourselves. It’s true there are other products that are cheaper, but every single one of those companies is unprofitable and many will probably be dead in a few years. See, for example, Airplane, Interval, or Dynaboard. Dynaboard just got acquired today (their founder is apparently “thrilled” about it: https://dynaboard.com/blog/figma-acquires-dynaboard) and they’re shutting down on April 30th. If you’re a paying customer you’ll need to rebuild all your apps by then. Ouch! (I’d rather pay more and not have worry about core pieces of my business getting shut down with three months’ notice.)

Re: Form to DB

#23

Post by pianoben »

Borealid wrote: post #18

I remember Microsoft InfoPath, for which this appears to be a competitor. I never really understood why InfoPath didn't catch on better.

Oh my goodness, what a blast from the past! Didn't you have to define forms using XML and XSLT? If I recall right, you had to host it either in SharePoint or InfoPath forms server.

Don't get me wrong, it was an amazing tool for its day, but had some steep and proprietary onramps that limited adoption. I'm personally not at all surprised that it faded from general consciousness.

Re: Form to DB

#24

Post by Borealid »

pianoben wrote: post #23
Borealid wrote: post #18

I remember Microsoft InfoPath, for which this appears to be a competitor. I never really understood why InfoPath didn't catch on better.

Oh my goodness, what a blast from the past! Didn't you have to define forms using XML and XSLT? If I recall right, you had to host it either in SharePoint or InfoPath forms server. Don't get me wrong, it was an amazing tool for its day, but had some steep and proprietary onramps that limited adoption. I'm personally not at all surprised that it faded from general consciousness.

You (usually) built forms using the graphical form editor, and they could be packaged as an executable desktop application that emailed you results back. If you wanted them to be in a browser they had to be on SharePoint, of course, because it's the usual Microsoft lock-in thing.

It was surprisingly good at letting non-computer-people build data gathering applications though.

Re: Form to DB

#26

Post by a_subsystem »

breadwinner wrote: post #9
cuffe wrote: post #7

Hi all, engineer who worked on forms @ Retool here. Excited to get HN’s feedback on a new product I’ve been working on: Retool Forms. There are a ton of form builders out there (e.g. Typeform, Google Forms, Airtable Forms, etc.) and honestly we weren’t really looking to build another one. But as a developer, I wanted my data in my database, not in another SaaS app (which probably has a shoddy API, like every example…

> There was no “one click” form-on-top-of-my-database tool available. Does this count: https://airforms.com/

Interesting. 'Automatic database diagrams'. How does that work in a db without primary/foreign keys?

Re: Form to DB

#27

Post by breadwinner »

a_subsystem wrote: post #26
breadwinner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no “one click” form-on-top-of-my-database tool available. Does this count: https://airforms.com/

Interesting. 'Automatic database diagrams'. How does that work in a db without primary/foreign keys?

In that case you would want to use another tool that is more manual than automatic.

Re: Form to DB

#28

Post by abrookewood »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #16

So Oracle forms, but with UX/DX :-)

Don't underestimate how important that is. I can tell an Oracle web app a mile away and I immediately now it is going to be an absolute pain to use: UI components too small/big; standard form controls missing; horrible lag etc
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