About the Blog

What is this Blog about?

      About Me

      I'm a 37 year old I.T. professional. My career began working in the infrastructure and networking aspects of technology, think servers, switches, storage, eventually virtualization and the like. Inevitably admins take on the role of supporting applications and software packages. The good admins take it on themselves to learn those software packages as thoroughly as they can to better support their user base. This brought me into managing ERP platforms and various CRM products over the years, as well as dozens of more focused packages for manufacturing, lab work, engineering and the list goes on. Nearly all of these systems utilize databases as their way to store and manage data. So while I still do all the former, my main focus had transitioned to SQL server administration, database maintenance and performance tuning, and of course reporting because what good is a database without being able to learn and guide your business from meaningful reports and dashboards of that data. 

    Introduction of Rapid Application development

    As time went on my users wanted more. They wanted odds and ends of data that simply didn't fit in any existing system we had.  Information that was important to the specific business we were running but couldn't easily be incorporated into our ERP (due to cost or limitations of the software) and didn't fit into our CRM package. While there was usually a way to do it, there were trade-offs and costs we simply didn't want to accept, so being the good admin and team player I was the search was on for a solution. What we needed as a simple Line-of-Business (LOB) application just for us.

In the mean time what did we do? The most common approach was Excel. We could store most of what we wanted data wise but there are numerous problems with doing this.

• Only one user could edit the shared workbook at a time
• Security was at best tricky, most of the time non-existent depending on where the user stored the file on the network.
• Error prone to user mistakes
• Customization options are limited
• Tedious reporting and sheet control.

   Then I found Visual Studio Lightswitch from Microsoft. It was a database centric application platform to build your own application built around a database, all with minimal coding. Beyond basic HTML/CSS and JavaScript work with web pages I had done prior to this I was not a developer. I did however know databases. It seemed like the perfect fir for these small jobs. I was able to build several small apps that did what we needed. We could now have all this data in a place I understood well, the interface was simple, but that was a good thing. The users took to it quickly and life was great, until it wasn't. Lightswitch ran on Silverlight, another underlying platform created by Microsoft. They terminated it as over time it didn't evolve well with the web technologies. It had no support for mobile devices, and ultimately why I feel they ended it as mobile support these days is critical to most business and their users.

   The search was on for a replacement. I now had years of experience with creating and using code for these applications but I still wanted a Rapid development tool to take on as much work as it could. That's the key you see, I still have servers and storage to manage, networks to troubleshoot, applications and users to support, not to mention databases and reports to create and tune. Time is important and I do have enough of it to do all the tedious tasks building software from scratch would entail. By 2018 the options for Rapid development tools had grown, considerably, and there are many good ones out there all with their own pros and cons. I found Outsystems, Mendix, Quickbase, Wavemaker were all great tools but costly for small businesses, some more so than others. I did consider Cuba-Platform but I did not know Java ( Lightswitch used C# ) and I didn't feel I had the time to pick up a new language. One very common problem with Rapid Development tools is vendor lock in. This means when you create an application in the platform you have to continue to use that platform to manage it, make changes, etc. I learned my lesson well with Lightswitch. No more vendor lock in for me. 

Radzen for the Win!   

   Then I found Radzen. It was a took that used current web technologies, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Angular to create applications. It uses C# code and supported Microsoft SQL Server for the database backend. It even had a few articles to help guide new users who were transitioning from LightSwitch. It hit all the buttons for me. Don't get me wrong, the software is young, and it was missing a few things compared to Lightswitch, notably creating the database and relationships inside the tool. As I said though I'm more a database admin than anything else these days, so building my own database is no issue. The best part is there is no vendor lock at all. I can create the application in Radzen and if I so choose discard the tool, take the code and continue on my own with the likes of Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code. The software does a lot for you, plumbing your application, and with some thought guides you to a great product. Early on in 2018, there were a few basic controls, but it did work. The team behind this tool though, that is the gem, they have relentlessly added features, controls, documentation and more. They are working on video tutorials, new features, and more all the time. The support is through their community forum and yes it is still a small user base but they read Every post, and I get meaningful responses in a quick turnaround. Refreshingly, I also get honest responses, meaning if it is a bug on the tools side of things, they says so, and most importantly they fix it. It is the team and this level of support behind this product that led me to create this Blog. I hope to help augment some of their training and support by posting my experiences here and in the process hope to help others who find this tool as useful as I do solve some problems, create some applications and ultimately serve their user base better.