Tool-less App-building
Recently there are many news headlines about app-building tools dubbed “no-code app development”, such as AppSheet which is acquired by Google, although conceptually these app-building tools are not much different from Visual Basic, which is an IDE for building Windows application in the 1990’s.
But have you ever seen a tool-less app-building, that is, building apps without any programming and without using an IDE? In the following video, we are going to show how you can build a data-processing application without using any specific tool.
Benefits
One obvious benefit of building applications without an IDE is avoiding the cost and the time spent on learning how to use the IDE. This would significantly lower the barrier of app-building, anyone with general computer skills can build an app, on any computer, as we’ve seen in the demo video.
Because of the simplicity, the cost of managing these applications is also much lower – to almost non-existent: for example, backing up an app solution you’ve built is as easy as zipping up a set of folders and put them away, and also easy to share; making a test (app) environment from production is simply copy the folders and moving them to another computer.
Solution Runtime
Note in the video, Foldda Integrator provides the environment for “running” the app (called a “solution”), we call it the “solution runtime”. Building and modifying a Foldda solution do not require any special tool.
Foldda Integrator contains a runtime that executes the solution. It is also a GUI front-end for visualizing a solution’s status, such as each module’s state and transactions and alerts. It also provides shortcuts for easy operating each module and accessing its logs.