Comments on: Coghead, A New Web App Machine

By: This Week’s Link Stream | Thought Stream: Nitin Badjatia's Weblog

This Week’s Link Stream | Thought Stream: Nitin Badjatia's Weblog — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:12:02 +0000

[...] GigaOM : » Coghead, A New Web App Machine – The evolution of web2.0 continues. Tagged as: [ajax coghead gigaom web2.0] [...]

By: Rollbase Wants to Make Programmers Obsolete - GigaOM

Rollbase Wants to Make Programmers Obsolete - GigaOM — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:06:14 +0000

[...] Stacey Higginbotham, Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 3:06 PM PT Comments (0) Platform-as-a-service provider Rollbase launched today, marketing its offerings as web-based software geared toward small- and medium-sized businesses. While the PaaS terminology conjures up images of Rollbase competing with something like Force.com or Bungee Labs, Rollbase is gunning for the same users as Coghead. [...]

By: links for 2007-04-26 | mad dog in the fog

links for 2007-04-26 | mad dog in the fog — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:51:52 +0000

[...] GigaOM » Coghead, A New Web App Machine “When we refer to cogheads, we are talking about problem solvers,” says McNamara, “They may not do java programming but they know how to solve their business problems. “ (tags: enterprise2.0) [...]

By: Nadeem

Nadeem — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:13:50 +0000

Suganya,

I just went through your website, i had some queries related to your product (Zoho). Suppose that i have a database schema with me say a basic HRM schema with say 150 tables (remember i dont have data in the spread sheets, its a blank database), i want to create an appication from scratch using this HRM shema. Is it possible?

If so how much time will this take?

What if i want to introduce some changes to my HRM application at a later time in the project, is this possible too?

What if i want to create a application using Zoho but i want the created application to point to a specific data base schema running somewhere in my LAN. Is it possible to do the same?

Thanks, Nadeem.

By: Nadeem

Nadeem — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:11:43 +0000

Suganya,

    I just went through your website, i had some queries related to your product (Zoho); Suppose that i have a database schema with me say a basic HRM schema with say 150 tables (remember i dont have data in the spread sheets, its a blank database), i want to create an appication from scratch using this HRM shema. Is it possible?

If so how much time will this take?

What if i want to introduce some changes to my HRM application at a later time in the project, is this possible too?

What if i want to create a application using Zoho but i want the created application to point to a specific data base schema running somewhere in my LAN. Is it possible to do the same?

Thanks, Nadeem.

By: Suganya

Suganya — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:51:15 +0000

Anil,

I agree with you. Complex data manipulations does become simpler when you think programatically. In this context, I would like to introduce Zoho Creator which is also a web based application creator. And it has a scripting language called Deluge that helps in creating complex applications. The syntax is also very simple and natural.

(link)
(link) isdeluge.html/

Thanks,
Suganya.

By: Anil Sharma

Anil Sharma — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:51:02 +0000

I had been technical leader and part of the team building "no-code" platform. The lessons learnt:

People do not build custom applications for simple problems. Such problems have enough complexity that very soon data structures and programs start showing up on the stage. If it is simpler than that then it has been solved using Excel.
A simple data structure manipulation is a nightmare using any declarative or graphical approach. It becomes trivial when you think in terms of a programming language.
If someone asks me to use a graphical tool to write XPath and XQuery, I will run as fast as I can … and … someone will want to check me for substance abuse.

Call us dumb head. We had no way to use scripts. Last I remember, a very senior engineer was debugging paragraph length XPath/ Xquery until he passed off - all he wated was to get 13th element of an array if first element was two; but only if 3rd element was not 1; provided 7th element is negative … otherwise …

I had a few email exchanges with a senior architect at MicroSoft on this topic. He had been through the same "less travelled roads".

Please, please, have scope for scripting…

By: Matthew Steffen

Matthew Steffen — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 01:33:36 +0000

I was wondering if you have ever heard of Interneer Intellect? It is a web-based project and process management system that is extremely flexible. It is designed to be configured by the basic business user who has no knowledge of programming. It is similar to CogHead. I would just say that it currently is developed to the point that Coghead could hope to be in 2-3 years. Interneer was the first company to really get involved in web-based user-configured business management software. That’s why Interneer is so far ahead of all the newbies just now getting into the game… like Coghead.

(link)

By: Greg Olsen

Greg Olsen — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:22:28 +0000

Brian, our service allows users to define whatever data structures they need in creating their applications. The service supports bi-directional integration (i.e. we dynamically generate inbound external web service interfaces for applications created by users, and our users can build applications that make outbound calls to external applications and services and then compose the results). The product provides a very simplified version of the workflow/process and data transformation capabilities you may be familiar with in EAI products. I hope this answers your question.

greg

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 14:26:27 +0000

Paul - interesting points you make - especially the one about being web based and there centralized by default. My bias comes from 10 years of implementing SAP in the enterprise and the pain I saw with departmental apps.

One other question for you - is there an underlying DB schema that is geared at the enterprise or is there another EAI layer for transformation to data stores etc.

I look forward to watching Cogheads progress.

Best, Brian

By: Paul McNamara

Paul McNamara — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 20:04:58 +0000

Brian, I tend to agree that the sweet spot is probably mid-market companies. But let me give you a counter argument for the enterprise. I spoke to the CIO of a very large company last week. He said that they have always seen (and always will see) a flood of operating departments coming to them looking for IT to create custom apps. This IT group, as with most, doesn’t have the resources to respond to this kind of request. A few years ago their policy was, ‘we can’t do it for you, and we won’t allow you to do it for yourself’. After a few years, they recognized that this policy was unworkable, so they changed to, ‘we can’t do it for you -- if you do it for yourself, you’re on your own, don’t come looking for support from us’. Under this new policy, operating departments began to develop Access and Filemaker apps for their own departmental need. Now, these operating departments are coming back to IT and saying “wow, managing this is hard, we need help and we are willing to pay you, Mr. IT, to support us”. This CIO is interested in Coghead because it will give him the ability to respond to the needs of operating departments, but to do it in a managed centralized way, without needing any new IT infrastructure. Because Coghead is a 100% web-based model, all of the apps and the data sit in one centralized place (Coghead's data center) and are managed just like a centralized computing model. The trouble with products like Access is, as you point out, that you get a proliferation of application instances that quickly becomes unmanageable. But Coghead is the opposite of the 4GL model from an application and data management standpoint. With a web-based model like Coghead you are actually managing it as a centralized resource. There is always only one software stack and one version.

By: Mohammad

Mohammad — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:59:42 +0000

I have used Remedy (now part of BMC Software) which allows users to create custom applications using very high level constructs. Remedy required the server to be installed and managed on the users’ servers, so security and deployment issues were not of concern. Although developing business processes using Remedy was very simple, many companies hired expensive contractors to create such processes. I wonder if the same thing will end up happening with Coghead.
There is a lot of value in allowing customers to either host the service within their firewalls or leave it outside. I personally thought it was a headache to take care of the Remedy installations whenever they had an update. We had to host it locally to maintain the security of our databases and customer information.
Remedy also had off-the shelf suites that you could buy instead of developing them from scratch and I always thought they were over priced.

By: Ashish Tomar

Ashish Tomar — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 23:20:59 +0000

I like Pip Coburn definition of change. Change = function (user’s crisis v user’s perceived pain of adoption)

I think it’s a cool idea, BUT I also know that an employee just can’t use any web platform to build "smaller custom project" in a fortune 1000 company.

There is always an IT department, internet security policy, software licensing policy, confedianlity policy between the innovator and the do-it-yourself-excel-killer-no-programming-required platform.

One thing that we all can agree is that coghead is not solving a crisis. Enterprises are doing just fine with excel email network folders but the perceived pain of adoption, I would say is at least 6 on a scale of 1-10 (Raise a PO for software license, explain it to the Boss, to IT department and then purchasing department, get team usernames and passwords, etc……)

Its just too much hassle…………..

I think they have better chance if they change their customer focus towards 100 employees businesses and help them in deploying/automating Business processes.

By: dave

dave — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 21:24:42 +0000

personally, i’ve gotta say that when somebody figures out how to aggregate the kazillions of VB programmers out there under one unified platform and tool like this, then we’ll see a winner…i heard (a while back) that the number of folks proficient in VB is roughly 1000 times the number working in c/+/# …this kind of approach to declarative programming also just continues to sound like a lot of what companies like microsoft have been talking about for a long, long time (think anders hjelsberg), and take a look at the new visual studio coming out - does this kind of stuff really even compare? it’s one thing to build a nifty little app that does a to-do list, it’s another to convince GM or Ford to use it to manage production in a real business environment…this stuff smells like pure novelty (dabbledb excluded, that’s some real work going on there)

By: Paul McNamara

Paul McNamara — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:41:20 +0000

Revneet, Ning tends to describe themselves as focusing on “social apps” and as such is aimed more at consumers. We’ve built Coghead with a laser focus on the needs of business users. Brian, you raise a great point about administration for business users. Our approach is to give customers a simple-to-use yet powerful way to manage permissions. The customer can control the privileges that each user has to each component of the system.

By: Jason Kolb

Jason Kolb — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:25:50 +0000

I think people who have never programmed before are far too scared of application development to pick up something like this. To them it seems like magic.

Also, people have tried this before. Remember Access and InfoPath? I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’ll fly. There’s a reason why programmers make lots of money, it’s not an easy concept to learn.