Recently I was in the market to find a solution for a client that wanted a web database. The requirements started of simple, but grew to where people from around the world would be able to enter data and others would be able to analyze and infer from this data.  In my past role I would have recommended a solution like SQL server or Oracle, with a Visual basic front end. Such a solution would easily take a week or more to develop, along with database hosting costs and you need good programming knowledge. What if a solution needs to be ready in say a day?  Is this even possible?
 
Some of the web 2.0 based database web publishing sites promise just that. In a matter of minutes you can import relational database elements from a spreadsheet or from a database, and create a web front end to it. The entire upload and web interface to it can be created in matter of hours. You can host this application on your website with a form. I evaluated three leading providers in this space, that offer relatively similar offering -

• Zoho
• EditGrid
• DabbleDB

I started off with Zoho that have a free database web publishing offering. Within an hour you can easily get a database populated and really with good web views of the data. Zoho has been around for while and offer an online word processor, spreadsheet, PowerPoint, meeting planner and much more. The database offering fell short of my clients expectation for the data privacy requirements and the ease of data inference. If you like pivot tables or cubes, you know the importance of these sort of data inferences which Zoho falls short off. However the Zoho Sheet and Zoho Writer with their plug-in for MS office or Open Office are attractive for any one that want to publish online and collaborate.
I didn't have to spend much time on EditGrid before I realized that this would fall short of my clients data privacy needs.
DabbleDB understand the importance of pivots and infering from the data. They have a free public hosting data package and another for businesses. Here you can upload your data similar to at Zoho, but that is where it all ends. Dabbledb takes you data and interprets date time field in so many different ways. Add to it the pivot functionality, along with all the elements of data capture make it an awesome offering.  
 

 
Few areas where things need to improve are with the online documentation, videos, help and would be great to have a excel or access plug-in to export data easier. I am sure these are around the corner. You got to love this new world where people across the world can collaborate globally! So the next time you think of traditional programming and hosting a database, think again. Don't you love this new world internet is creating?

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 articles Web Database