Today I finally signed up for a free trial of dabbledb. It’s a web-wased Database App. It supports multiple users and has sophisticated data import and normalization options. It is aimed at all the non-numbercrunching stuff that is done in excel-sheets, that are mailed around to organize or track things. I tried to model a small business and I was pretty successful. It supports various export media and formats, such as public web-sites, rss, or CSV.
I currently see two problems that might prevent dabble from catching on. The pricing scheme is a bit weird – just number of users and apps is considered, while the volume is irrelevant. As dabble targets collaborative activities the number of users is crucial – even if the volume/ number of transactions is very small. Other thing is the missing localization. Mircrosoft has spoilt us by providing germanized Apps.
Verdict: Dabble is very well suited for stuff we currently do using excel or custom build web apps. Make sure you check out the 7min screencast!
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