Power platform envy? Google wants to 'empower non-technical employees' with new Business Apps category
- Reference: 1599566590
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/08/google_low_code_platform/
- Source link:
Where have we heard that before? Perhaps from Microsoft, which touts its “Power Platform” as the [2]solution for “citizen developers.” AWS is also sniffing at this market, with its recently introduced [3]Honeycode service.
Google said today that the category of Business Application Platform was new, but much of it is not, instead being a re-positioning of existing services. The no-code element comes largely from AppSheet, a company [4]acquired by Google in January this year. Another part of the platform is [5]Looker, a business intelligence analytics and visualization tool acquired in June 2019 . Google also regards [6]Apigee , API management services acquired in 2016, as part of the Business Application Platform.
Citizen developers will probably not build their own APIs, but they can now use Apigee APIs in AppSheet applications, thanks to the general availability of Apigee Data Source for AppSheet. Other data sources for AppSheet include Google Sheets, Excel on Office 365, Salesforce data, and relational data in SQL Server, mySQL, PostgreSQL or AWS DynamoDB. No doubt this list will become more Google-flavoured in future, with the Apigee link an example.
AppSheet. Gesundheit! Oh, we see – it's Google pulling no-code development into a cloudy embrace [7]READ MORE
The company has now introduced AppSheet Automation, which lets non-technical folk automate existing processes. More details will follow this week, but Google said the new service includes an AI-driven interface with “contextual suggestions based on natural language input”, and the ability to automate processes including document-based workflows, integration with other applications, and “human-centric processes”; though how the cloud giant automates this last one was not specified.
Google will also introduce an API Gateway this week, now in beta. This is for managing APIs built on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), App Engine, Compute Engine (VMs), and serverless platforms Cloud Functions and Cloud Run. API Gateway uses [8]Envoy under the covers, a service proxy also used by the Istio service mesh.
Building business applications on Google's platform makes best sense for those organisations already hooked into G Suite, just as Microsoft's Power Platform ties into Office 365 and Dynamics. Google's platform is currently more limited, but if that means simpler and less sprawling, it might be no bad thing. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/14/google_bigquery_analytics_goes_multicloud/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/18/microsoft_introduces_new_licensing_plans_for_powerapps_nocode_platform_and_guess_what_its_expensive/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/amazon_honeycode_nocode/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/15/google_cloud_embraces_nocode_development_with_appsheet_acquisition/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/13/google_acquires_looker/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/08/google_buys_apigee/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/15/google_cloud_embraces_nocode_development_with_appsheet_acquisition/
[8] https://www.envoyproxy.io
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
New Wheel Invented?
They've been pushing "Low Code" for non developers et al for decades and it ALWAYS results in real devs having to take over a rubbish solution which is near impossible to support. See Cobol, dBase, Access, Excel, and doubtless many others...
Re: New Wheel Invented?
Agreed. We all threw up our hands at this when Microsoft suggested they were going to help non-technical users. We all know that this is going to be the typical shadow IT routine, where things will lie hidden somewhere until they break, then it'll be our problem.
However, that'll be long after the geniuses in the organisation who thought this would be a good idea have picked up their bonuses and left.
Re: New Wheel Invented?
Where I work tried a 'low code' 'solution' (nameless to protect the criminal) which I got some training on. My impression was of the 'solution' is was actually much harder to work with than writing code in the traditional manner. I seriously doubt non-programmers could actually get something that works and programmers were frustrated by the inability to fix problems efficiently.
Low code solutions have to so modular that one can literally 'drag-and-drop' modules into the code and it will work. But one of the major problems I have seen is the backend code is often so bad that any competent programmer will vomit when they see it.
Nothing is new.
So Access then. With the same unsupported, undocumented bodge job that someone has to support for the next 20 because Barbara in accounts uses it everyday and know one has a clue what it actually does.
Re: Nothing is new.
Of course, but now with so many DB types understood, DB admins also have more job security. Remember way back when admins (or someone) used to hide C: or D: or whatever, but all you had to do was type that in manually for access... this move has that type of foreshadowing.
I have no idea why you should give anything, people or machine, access to protocols that have no business using them. However, the sunny side is that this does give hope to prisoners as they may soon be making not just license plates, but firearms.
Bah!
Empower non-technical employees?
I thought we already did that with Javascript and Frontpage.
non-technical programming
FFS... programming is hard. Programming is technical. It's hard to lay out a process in a logical concise order that can be maintained. It's hard to consider edge cases. It's hard to translate vague requirements into solid specifications.
The problem is NOT that language X is hard to learn.
Programming *languages* are the easy part of the job. Learn the syntaxes, learn the standard libraries, learn language-specific design patterns and you're fairly productive in a new language.
Too many people (managers, CEOs, and some entire software companies) think programming is just lots of typing, and if it wasn't so hard to "learn C" or "learn Java" ("I tried that learn Java in 21 days and gave up after a month") anyone could program, and "programmers" would not be needed.
See also: Excel, LabVIEW, Java (in some contexts).
Ye Gods
When you hear something being described as "empowering" you can be pretty sure it'll be crap.