ZOHO DB

There are three main elements to any database application.

1. A means of capturing data. For example, a supermarket might capture sales data with a barcode reader. In other cases a form might be used for data entry.

2. A database in which to store the captured data.

3. A means of producing reports on the contents of the database.

Microsoft Access is probably the most widely used desktop application. IBM and Oracle produce the most widely used mainframe database applications. There is also a growing number of web applications, where a database application and users data is stored on a web server and accessed by a browser.

ZOHO has a large suite of web applications, including a spreadsheet, a word processor, a wiki and web conferencing. One of its most powerful applications is ZOHO Creator.

This application allows users to create forms to capture data and to store that data in a simple database. It is easy to use but powerful, and I have used it to create a number of applications.

ZOHO Creator also has a report writer, but it is extremely basic and to date users have had to export their data if they have wanted to do any analysis.

ZOHO have now introduced ZOHO DB which is a powerful report writer which allows data to be analysed in a number of ways, including with charts, a pivot table and a summarising tool. It is a very impressive piece of work and, when combined with Creator, puts ZOHO miles ahead of their competitors. Google has nothing comparable.

It is still a work in progress, and that is the beauty of web applications over desktop applications. Improvements can be rolled out at any time. One change that is needed is for the Query Table feature will have to be given a more user friendly interface, rather than requiring users to learn SQL.

ZOHO DB is not yet fully integrated with ZOHO Creator but this will no doubt come in time. For the moment users can copy and paste their data from Creator to DB.

ZOHO have been adding to their suite of applications at an impressive rate. I think they now need to pause and do the following.

1. Ensure the different applications are better integrated.

2. Improve their documentation. The help for Creator is particularly bad. ZOHO need to appoint some professional writers. At the moment the documentation looks as if it has been written by programmers.

3. Make their application interfaces more intuitive. I have wasted far too much time going from page to page trying to find out how to accomplish a simple task.