Pensieri di un lunatico minore

Dabble is bloody brilliant

Yesterday, I managed to score a preview account to look at DabbleDB, which is being written by Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton. The goal is to capture the long tail that is represented by the millions of “mini applications” and “mini databases” that are stored in Excel spreadsheets around the world. To put it to the test, I decided to implement my company’s internal asset database, currently stored in an Excel spreadsheet.

5 minutes.

Read that again. 5 minutes. All I had done was watch the presentation at the Vancouver Lisp meeting (Quicktime), and that’s it. Didn’t read any documentation.

So, that under the belt, I decided to also add our evaluation systems into it, and track all the equipment that goes in and out of the organization for evaluation by customers.

5 minutes.

Seriously. Most of that was spent thinking about what was needed: target end dates compared to real end dates, tracking information, etc. A few clicks, presses, and boom. Not only does it allow you to associate hardware with an evaluation, it automatically links up together multiple pieces of hardware on the same evaluation without having to try even making the slightest effort to tie them together.

There’s still a few missing pieces, obviously, but not only is the core concept excellently worked through, but the implementation is amazingly polished. Compared to some other tools I’ve used, it’s lightyears ahead in both usability and functionality.

Update: I found a minor bug in their Excel importing facility, and sent an email to Avi and Andrew. It was fixed in an hour or so and now works beautifully.