Everyone is a product manager. This sentence has been said since 15 years. It means that everyone can design products (such as the apps and web pages you use), and only need to understand the entire product.
Is everyone a programmer?
Many people know that programmers working overtime are daily routines, and sedentary, hair loss, and weight gain are characteristics. However, when it comes to being easily replaced, how can we rely on technology to eat? (Psychological activity: At most, Huawei can't do it. If you change to a smaller company, it will be just as successful)
The arrival of the low-code platform is like a face: those who have not learned SQL can also learn SQL, even skip this step, and use low-code tools to do the same thing as me.
Gartner predicts that in 4 years, the proportion of low code will exceed 65%, and the internal volume will be more serious.
However, don’t be afraid of programmers. Those who don’t understand the code but are eager to try it, don’t be happy too early. What are the advantages and disadvantages of low code?
Low code is just a tool, and the value of a tool comes from the people who use it. Imagine if in the future the boss always uses people with no foundation, wouldn't it be a mess? Take Ali as an example. Their middle stage can't do it without a low-code platform.
But if you want to hand over the entire platform to a zero-based one, if Double 12 collapses, who will be responsible? Therefore, the knowledge of the developer is very useful and can be further developed to achieve more complex functions.
More importantly, because professional developers are familiar with database, structure and other knowledge, they will work more efficiently.
In addition to improving efficiency, what are the reasons why developers or people with zero foundation can use low-code platforms? I thought about the following practical points:
- Digital transformation is a concept that has been mentioned repeatedly. Traditional companies certainly cannot build big data platforms and data centers like Internet companies. Low-code platforms are innovations for them.
- IT budget, development labor costs are always expensive, team costs may allow you to make choices
- For programming novices or applications where the development project is simple and modular, the development efficiency is definitely increased exponentially
So I took a look at low-code tools, so many, how to choose? Even Ali has similar products. Is it right for me to enter the market? Not really!
Let me talk about it from three aspects.
1. Selection preparation
1. Identify users, who are developers?
As mentioned above, the IT department and the business department should jointly participate in the decision-making before selecting the model.
2. Clarify the scene:
It depends on what you want to do with the low-code platform. This will be discussed later.
3. The management system of the platform: with whom? Is it compatible? This can maximize the effect of low-code platforms.
Two, platform classification
1. Form-driven:
It can be understood as "online Excel", which is mainly used to build financial management, invoicing, and other applications, such as FineReport.
2. Process-driven:
Generally include form development, chart development, process design and other functional modules, which are mainly used for the development of enterprise internal applications, such as enterprise internal OA, business management systems (such as HRM, etc.), such as Jiandao Cloud, Yidao, etc.
Of course, the FineReport mentioned above can also be used for the development of forms and charts, so it is universal on the whole.
3. Model-driven:
Through the graphical construction of the business model re-modeling layer, the ability to form a blueprint to the system can finally meet the needs of complex business scenarios on the enterprise side, such as FineBI and Tableau.
Three, architecture selection
1. Overall structure:
Whether the overall architecture is B/S or C/S, it is recommended to give priority to the B/S architecture. B/S has unparalleled advantages in security, system expansion, cloud support, etc. Whether it supports Oracle, Mysql, Mongo, etc. Kind of database.
2. Compatibility and scalability:
Can it be connected to external platforms? Is there a rich API interface to meet customized development?
3. Security: I don't need to say more about this.
Having said so much, don’t you think it’s imaginary? Let me give you an example of report and BI. In the past, report development had to be written line by line, and the requirements changed at will. It was common to not look at the report after it was completed.
With a low-code platform, familiar with Excel operations, plus understanding simple codes, can easily perform various styles of report design without having to learn Java, php and other complex programming languages.
In the past, we asked a third party to help us develop reports. Sometimes we couldn’t do what we needed because they could not understand our business and reports.
Secondly, our reporting requirements have changed greatly. This is the case today, and tomorrow may be another one. The development of software companies is one-off, which does not meet our long-term needs, and the speed is very slow.
Finally, we use FR to build a report platform. With this report platform, our own personnel can make reports, which is very convenient and fast, without developers, and saves a lot of labor costs.
As a low-code platform, FineReport has its advantages. No professional developers are needed. Anyone can make reports as long as they understand a little database and SQL. Because many people in the IT department are not purely technical. personnel.
What if I don’t know a database or SQL? No problem, another low-code or even zero-code platform, FineBI, can also have the same effect, so I say low-code, not just for developers.
If finance, marketing, and sales personnel also want to use it, it is certainly possible.
If you look at the animation above, it seems that you can simply drag and drop to generate visualizations, but you don't know that many of the following functions are encapsulated. In the past, you would have to write a lot of code in this step, which is no longer needed.
Like the report tool, it can also connect to multiple databases, and the data can be viewed in real time in a browser.
When a simple need arises, you can analyze it directly. In the past, you used IT to communicate, and then the IT staff wrote the code to give you the result. The low-code platform completely changed this working model.
There are challenges as well as opportunities. If you want to use a low-code platform, first change your mind.
This article simply mentions the technical selection of some major aspects in the development of the low-code platform. The details are very complicated, enough to write dozens of articles to elaborate. The space here is too small to expand one by one.