Think fast

Relational vs Non-Relational Databases | What's the Difference?

Getting your data model right is the first step in any successful development or transformation project. Today, we’re exploring everything you need to know about relational vs non-relational databases. This has become a tougher decision in the past decade or so. Until relatively recently, the relational model was pretty much the dominant way of storing data. Today, it’s still by far the most ubiquitous option - but other approaches have also entered the mainstream.

Ronan McQuillan

Apr 21, 2023

Experimenting with RPA & Low-Code for CRUD Development

We’ve been having a little in-house debate about combining RPA tools and low-code development - that we decided to put to the test. Basically, we ran an experiment to see if we can answer two questions: Can we get an RPA tool to build low-code apps? Would anyone ever actually want to do that? See, at their core, low-code and RPA are both meant to save you time - but the tradeoff is that you sacrifice some of the flexibility that you’d get with doing things the old-fashioned way - either performing a task manually or coding an equivalent solution from scratch.

Ronan McQuillan

Mar 20, 2023

Custom App Development | Ultimate Guide

Custom app development is a huge undertaking - even for very simple solutions. It’s also one of the biggest investments your company is likely to make. When it comes to creating bespoke solutions for your team, it pays to get things right. The trouble is that there are so many distinct considerations to keep in mind. All sorts of technical, operational, and even creative decisions impact the ultimate success of your custom development project.

Ronan McQuillan

Mar 3, 2023

App UI Design | Ultimate Guide

Building applications is all about making users’ lives easier, smoother, and more efficient. Your app UI design is a critical part of this. As we’ll see, UIs impact everything from the basic usability of your tools to the concrete business value they’ll ultimately provide. Still, we’ve all struggled with using poorly-designed applications. Today we’re going in-depth on what you need to know about building effective UI/UXs. We’ll cover everything from the core principles of design, to specific tools, techniques, and strategies you can use to build incredible UIs.

Ronan McQuillan

Jun 28, 2022

Enterprise App UI Design | In-Depth Guide

In enterprise environments, productivity and efficiency are everything. When you have thousands of users, even the most minor process improvements can hugely impact revenues. Of course, there are countless different ways you can streamline processes. Today, we’re diving deep into enterprise app UI design. More specifically, we’ll cover the unique challenges faced by enterprise design teams, the concrete strategies you can implement to overcome these, the tools at your disposal, and how low-code tools like Budibase are changing the way large organizations build custom apps.

Ronan McQuillan

Jun 27, 2022

How to Build a GitHub Metrics Dashboard

Managing a GitHub repository is hard. Your developers are too valuable to waste their time on simple admin tasks, like pulling stats. A quick way to overcome this is with a GitHub metrics dashboard. With a dashboard, you can instantly see everything you need to know. You can use a dedicated app to find out what is working well or to discover and fix issues. However, due to the unique nature of GitHub projects, it’s hard to find a pre-made dashboard that suits your needs.

Ronan McQuillan

Jun 13, 2022

What is Data Access Control | In-Depth Guide

Data access control is a crucial element of any information security strategy. Companies today face a more complex regulatory environment than ever when it comes to protecting personal data. However, this must be balanced with the need for efficient, data-driven decision-making. As such, how users are assigned access to data across your organization has enormous implications. Today, we’re going to cover everything your need to know about data access controls, including the theory, the specific methods available to you, and how to create the right framework for your needs.

Ronan McQuillan

May 23, 2022

Public forms - how to build a public form in minutes

What is a public form A public form is a digital form that is accessible to anyone on the internet. The difference between a public and private form is the access level. Private forms are only accessible to predefined users behind a secure log-in. Public form examples There are many examples where a user may want to create a public form. I’ve listed a few of these scenarios below: A public survey.

Joe Johnston

Apr 20, 2022