Recommend a domestic enterprise-level low-code-free platform that can rival international manufacturers

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Foreword: Softstart Entrepreneurs in Urgent Need of Transformation

Two weeks ago, a classmate of mine who started a company in his hometown (Luoyang) after graduating from a bachelor’s degree asked me how to improve human efficiency for a software development company with more than 100 employees like him in the current environment of increasing labor costs on the Internet. To ensure the survival of the enterprise, how to transform, so as to have a better chance of becoming bigger and stronger?

In response to his question, combined with years of work and project development experience in the past, I immediately recommended to him the no-code software platform smardaten that I and many entrepreneurial teams in Beijing, Shanghai and other places are using . A no (low) code development product that is comprehensive and smooth and can really greatly improve development efficiency. This blog post will share with readers the darling of the era under the current wave of new technologies: no (low) code development technology.

What is low/no code

Low-code was proposed by Forrester in 2014, but its concept is not new. In fact, from paper tape punching, to assembly language, to high-level language, to various IDEs, and various frameworks, people are always trying to shield the underlying complexity. Through induction, abstraction, encapsulation, and then through point-and-drop and a small amount of code to quickly complete the development of the application.

The early Access database, QuickBase, PowerBuilder, etc. can actually be regarded as the prototype of low-code. Due to the constant changes in customer needs and underlying technologies, the form of low-code has also changed. For example, the once-familiar Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG webpage three swordsmen, as a form of low-code, were popular for a while, but with the B/ With the rise of the S architecture, the separation of the front and back ends, and the programming of web pages, its scenery is no longer. Today, low-code refers to a cloud-native, horizontally scalable application development platform (APaaS). No-code refers to the way of building applications without any code, which can be regarded as a subset of low-code or an advanced form of low-code.

High enterprise-level software construction costs

Under the traditional software development methods in the past, the successful application and rapid implementation of enterprise-level software projects have been restricted by at least the following three problems for a long time:

1. Long development cycle

There are many software development links. Software development includes requirements analysis, design, coding, testing, deployment and maintenance, optimization and improvement, etc. These links often involve different personnel, different departments, and even different companies, and the information transmission between them must be attenuated. The unequal transmission of information leads to the phenomenon that the delivered product is quite different from the customer's expectation, which causes the project to be postponed or even unfinished.
The software development cycle is long. Traditional software development can be as short as a few months and as long as a year or two. The requirements for developers and project familiarity are very high. Once there is a transfer of personnel in the middle, it is easy to slow down the development progress.
From project approval to delivery and acceptance, there are many links, long development cycle, personnel turnover and other factors, which jointly cause the long delivery cycle of software development.

2. There are various stuck points in requirements clarification, software modification, system integration, etc.

In the process of digital transformation, there are various stuck points between the software demander (Party A) and the software supplier (Party B). The specific performance is:

(1) Party B often hopes that Party A's needs are very clear, but Party A's digital transformation itself is a process of crossing the river by feeling the stones.
(2) Party A hopes that the software can be modified in the later stage, but Party B will never allow the software that has put in a lot of labor to be overthrown and restarted, unless Party A pays additionally, so Party B is generally unwilling to over-participate in the development process, especially in the later stage.
(3) Party A often owns multiple Party Bs (whether in different periods or in the same period). These software systems are often inconsistent in experience and data, and the integration work is complicated. .
(4) Both Party A and Party B hope that the employees are stable. Even if they are unstable, they can ensure the smooth connection of the project without causing a lot of repetitive docking work, let alone unfinished work. However, under the existing development model, both parties are actually highly dependent on individual employees or specific implementation A small team has always brought higher employment and maintenance costs.

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3. Data management chaos

At present, the software systems used by many traditional enterprises have many inconsistencies due to historical reasons: the underlying data storage is not uniform, the underlying data standards are not uniform, the development language is not uniform, the visual and interactive experiences are not uniform, and the deployment methods are not uniform. Many enterprises use the method of data center to "stitch" the problem of inconsistent data level, which not only brings a lot of repetitive and inefficient SQL work, but also makes it difficult to quickly mine and apply data value.

No-code/low-code development, the trend of the times

No-code/low-code facilitates the digital transformation and upgrade of various types of business in three aspects: accelerated application, data governance, and knowledge accumulation:

Application side: It is difficult to build enterprise-level software flexibly and quickly, which is a pain point faced by most enterprises, especially in today's rapidly changing technology and market environment. This kind of pain point not only leads to low development efficiency, but also leads to the attenuation of information transmission in the development process due to many links and long cycle. Handy good software. Flexible no-code can effectively solve this pain point. Due to technical capability encapsulation and reuse, development efficiency is greatly improved. Party A and Party B carry out round-table development between different roles, and software users really participate, and software quality and experience are significantly improved. . Later software maintenance and optimization are simple, and can often be completed in a front-line closed-loop. The R&D side no longer deals with these "minor tasks", and time and energy are used for more meaningful things.

Data governance: more and more data, more and more chaotic, is another pain point faced by enterprises. Data-driven no-code emerges as the times require: data generation is governance, and governance can be reused. As long as the software built on this platform is built, the underlying data will naturally connect. The software directly "grows" on the unified data base, and the non-perceptual data is formed by an integrated closed loop. Under the logic of growth, the service life cycle of soft companies has also become longer, and one-shot transactions have become companion-style growth.

Knowledge accumulation: When software development is fast and flexible, and enterprise data is connected and “tidy”, another pain point of the enterprise—domain knowledge and employee wisdom often exist in the individual’s brain and cannot be deposited in the enterprise system—is also easily solved. Due to the simplicity of software development, employees no longer suppress their own needs, ideas, and creativity, forming a positive cycle of "trying because of love, and loving because of trying", and the concept of citizen development can be implemented. Due to real-time data governance, historical data can be used for analysis and decision-making as much as possible. Data analysis is no longer the exclusive right of managers and analysts. Data directly empowers every business person. The emergence of artificial intelligence, especially the general-purpose large model, will further accelerate the explicitization and precipitation of knowledge: the natural language and operation actions of experienced employees are recorded and analyzed, and then converted into data, scripts, and systems, and precipitated into corporate assets . In addition, data analysis facilitates further process optimization. The enterprise software system is no longer just an IT skeleton, but has the blood and flesh of domain knowledge and wisdom.

In recent years, code-free software products from various major domestic and foreign manufacturers have also emerged one after another. When selecting code-free products, our team focused on researching Microsoft's Power Platform and Nanjing Shurui Data's smardaten, and finally compared and synthesized them in multiple ways. After consideration, our boss decided to connect all teams to smardaten for the development of new projects. The following is a summary of the experience of using these two products.

No-code platform smardaten

1. Introduction to smardaten

The smardaten enterprise-level code-free software platform independently developed by Shurui Data is based on a one-stop big data capability and a code-free software development platform, helping customers build a digital-use-integrated application system through a data-driven code-free software assembly mode , improve software development efficiency, reduce costs, and accelerate digital transformation.

smardaten is mainly divided into community edition, professional edition, enterprise edition and proprietary edition. The community edition is free and commercially available, and can be used directly by small and medium-sized development teams and individual developers. The enterprise edition and proprietary edition have more rich and powerful functions Components to improve the efficiency and service capabilities of the entire software development process.

2. Features of smardaten

The underlying logic of a platform: integration of data and application

For many large and medium-sized traditional enterprises, it is easy to encounter such a bottleneck in the process of upgrading industrial software: data islands are formed between different software systems and generated data, and it is difficult to fully tap the value of data.

The feature of smardaten's "integration of data and application" perfectly solves the problem of isolated data within large enterprises, allowing the accumulated data to be automatically turned into assets, and returned to the business system through data analysis, so that decision-making can be relied upon and the value of data is fully reflected. Realize the integration of data and application, continuously complete the application to generate data, discover the law of data, and the law guides business optimization and innovation.

Three core features: no code, enterprise level, data-driven

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Six Key Capabilities

关键能力一：设计态+开发态，全流程、多角色的协同

Regardless of whether new or old products are in the early stage of design or in the middle and late stages of development, they can follow up requirements in a timely manner. A set of smardaten tools runs through the entire process of software development requirements, design, implementation, operation and maintenance, and achieves efficient collaboration for multiple roles.

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关键能力二：应用构建全程无代码

smardaten focuses on building full-process applications without code, abstracting development requirements into configuration capabilities as much as possible, lowering thresholds and improving efficiency. For small and medium-sized development teams, by switching to the smardaten platform for development, the efficiency of personnel will be improved several times.

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关键能力三：先进架构能力，DFX保驾护航

Native security base, comprehensive DFX (Design for X) design, providing security mechanism, high concurrent processing, load balancing and other capabilities.
Full life cycle operation and maintenance, no need for operation and maintenance to implement redevelopment or use third-party tools to ensure the orderly operation of all applications on the platform.
Efficient integration framework to achieve full integration of data, permissions, menus and services.

关键能力四：复杂逻辑的可视化组装配置

Breaking away from the code can also quickly respond to the needs of complex application scenarios, lower the development threshold, and support changeable business development with assembly-style agile development.
Not only people with certain development experience can turn smardaten into a productivity tool, but test, product, and operation and maintenance personnel can also quickly get started with this no-code development tool, visual operation, drag and drop, and a page can be completed in a few minutes Front-end and back-end development, coupled with intelligent data management, even the work of sql is saved. From then on, I said goodbye to sql Boy and was directly promoted to a full-stack engineer.

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关键能力五：业务能力沉淀，提高业务响应

An open platform for professional developers, with continuous accumulation of configuration and development capabilities, continuous precipitation of industry application construction capabilities, and realization of personalized, high-value functional requirements.
Support various complex industry scenarios: the platform has no industry attributes, and can cooperate with soft companies in various fields to implement industry applications.

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关键能力六：满足大数据能力的开发与管理

For enterprises, data is the core of software and is where the value lies. Through big data analysis, mining the intrinsic value of enterprise data and empowering future business is essential for the healthy development of enterprises. The big data capabilities of the smardaten platform are ready to use and integrated Intelligent technology reduces the difficulty of data development and management for developers, and provides a variety of machine learning and deep learning algorithms that have been widely used and verified to help companies reduce the cost and threshold of data analysis. People who can operate the visual interface can easily according to their own needs. Complete the desired data feature analysis.

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Collaboration between codeless and AI to help engineers develop together

In addition to packaging support for various front-end and back-end development technology stacks and engines, the no-code platform smardaten also provides a variety of AI technology components, including: operator components, graph components, OCR components, and NLP components; these machine learning and deep learning components With the addition of AI, the capabilities of enterprise software have been further expanded, and AI technology can be easily used to improve user experience and empower business development.
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No code platform Power Platform

1. Introduction to Power Platform

Power Platform: The unified low-code development platform launched by Microsoft provides a fully visualized and low-code development experience for all, and realizes the integration, customization and expansion of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365, the "troika" of Microsoft's intelligent cloud, and also It can be seamlessly connected with third-party business applications and data services, helping business customers easily obtain data insights, create business applications, and accelerate business process automation

The four commonly used product lines of Power Platform are as follows:

Power BI is a commercial visual analysis software based on Power Query, Power Pivot and Power View architecture, and it is also the flagship product of Platform; it allows users to visualize data obtained from multiple sources, and realizes self-service analysis and enterprise on one platform Data analysis needs
Power APP: Build customized business applications without code, seamlessly connect with Microsoft Smart Cloud, and support Adobe, Salesforce and other third-party business applications, SaaS services and diverse data sources through connectors. Through a clear graphical interface and simple mouse operations, developers can quickly build modern businesses suitable for different platforms such as web pages, PCs, iOS, and Android. Using preset models and advanced development tools, professional developers can also add more complex functions to business applications in a coded way
Power Automate: A low-code development platform that automates workflows and business processes. It can call new applications by accessing APIs, and can also operate on the UI interface in the form of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to realize the management of old applications. Application automation control. Transforming repetitive simple tasks into automated processes can improve employee productivity and allow people to focus their limited energy on more valuable work
Power Virtual Agents: A no-code/low-code application that allows anyone to create and deploy intelligent AI-powered virtual agents, users can easily sign up, create conversational bots and embed them into websites with just a few clicks. No infrastructure to maintain or complex systems to deploy

2. Features of Power Platform

Backed by the international giant Microsoft, Power Platform has guaranteed product quality, functional features and international standards, and localized customization development capabilities are also expanding
Using Power BI can not only realize the integration, customization and expansion of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365, the "troika" of Microsoft's intelligent cloud, but also seamlessly connect with third-party business applications and data services
At present, Power Platform has built-in a variety of connectors, supports many third-party services, and also supports custom connectors
Support Azure public cloud mode deployment

Comparison of product capabilities between smardaten and Power Platform

The following is a comparative analysis of the two products from multiple dimensions such as platform capabilities, data capabilities, analysis capabilities, application building capabilities, and product service capabilities based on the experience of using the two products of our previous team:

Platform Capability Comparison

platform capability	smardaten	Power Platform
development mode	Data-driven, can be deployed without generating source code	Model-driven, generate source code
development tools	The development tools are complete, including page design, process design, logic design, data analysis and data large screen design, etc.; AI technology components are rich, but the effect of some AI algorithms provided is slightly different from that of top manufacturers	It has construction tools for overall solutions such as canvas and application design, business flow and cloud flow design, data analysis, AI construction, etc., supports the export and migration of solutions, and has a large number of built-in models. It is a platform for professional IT developers and requires professional code. And function writing ability, high learning cost, high usage requirements
Operation and maintenance deployment	The product supports one-key deployment capability, and has an independent operation and maintenance communication module to facilitate the operation and maintenance personnel to perform unified operation and maintenance on system deployment, upgrade, log analysis, monitoring and alarming, resource management, etc., and supports privatized deployment and SaaS cloud deployment ;	With the help of the Azure DevOps platform, it has complete DevOps capabilities and high software deployment efficiency, and only supports Microsoft public cloud deployment;
openness	It has the ability of secondary development, and the granularity of customization is flexible, from back-end logic to front-end display; native components are more general and basically do not involve industry fields;	The ecology is complete, the secondary development capability is very flexible, and a large number of data types and library docking are supported. Application developers can flexibly perform secondary development of functions
compatibility	Support docking with mainstream cloud platforms, including AWS, Huawei Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, etc.;	Only supports Microsoft platform
innovative	Combined with AI capabilities, the platform is more efficient during use, including automatic document generation, design sketch recognition, intelligent application assembly assistant, heterogeneous data analysis, etc.	Rich data connection components, open up the automation of various components in the cloud or local flow (RPA) custom API, function and deep integration of AI building capabilities and Azure cloud services

Data capability comparison

data capability	smardaten	Power Platform
Heterogeneous data access capability	30+ relational database support, 10+ mainstream real-time message protocol support, 10+ mainstream NoSQL database support, 5+ mainstream domestic database support, not enough and open ability to do plug-ins	Hundreds of connectors handle multi-source heterogeneous data, and 10+ mainstream app data integrations are preset
real-time data processing	10+ mainstream IoT protocol data processing, such as Modbus, Kafka, MQTT, etc., and event analysis and processing of data	Built-in connectors handle real-time data
Data Standards and Quality Management	The connected data or the data generated by codeless applications will be automatically connected to the data base, and the data standards will be automatically associated and constrained, and the data quality will be audited and analyzed. All data associations and blood relationships are clearly visible, which is convenient for quality problem location	Entity rule standard formulation based on data table
data integration	Built-in input, output, conversion, union, aggregation, sorting and other 60+ operator and algorithm nodes, realize data visualization integrated management, pipeline operation, automatic monitoring and alarm, and can also be linked with business flow, and the scene support is more abundant	Built-in data flow, realize data flow cleaning through operator orchestration
Data Security	Built-in 10+ national secret security algorithms, support data encryption, decryption and desensitization processing, provide security hierarchical management, row and column authority control, security key, dynamic authority control, security function system and user organization level control, etc. The security protection mechanism of the life cycle prevents data from being leaked, abused, and misused.	Dataverse relies on Azure's cloud data security for data collection and management, and has separate authentication, key management and other modules. Provides authentication, integrity, and confidentiality of data transmitted over the network at the IP packet level, compliant with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)-256, which replaces Data Encryption Standard (DES) and RSA 2048 public key encryption
data governance	It has the asset management capability of the whole data life cycle. Currently, it only supports the processing of structured and semi-structured data, as well as unstructured document processing. However, the capability of audio and video unstructured data is lacking, and the capability of data labeling is lacking.	The platform itself does not have data governance capabilities. It mainly relies on data governance services on the Azure cloud, mainly Azure Purview and Azure Synapse services. Purview provides data discovery, classification and mapping, data catalogs and governance, and Synapse provides data preparation services. , tools for data management, data warehousing, big data and AI tasks
data service	Provide data service self-publishing capabilities, complete data service subscription and monitoring functions: built-in internal/external/arrangement/search services, realize custom data services, support access methods such as restful/soap/download, and can also be hosted or forwarded, Service interface access has a variety of security authentication mechanisms, and has good stability and scalability	Provide data service self-publishing capabilities, complete data service subscription and monitoring functions, and independent service bus capabilities

Analysis ability comparison

Skills of analyze	smardaten	Power Platform
Data Analysis and Visualization	Supports 80+ analysis graphics, 20+ data calculation operators, supports complex report display, built-in AI intelligence capabilities such as time series analysis, root cause analysis, etc., to achieve diversified data display and intelligent analysis to assist decision-making	Hundreds of built-in analysis charts
complex report	Support cross report, cell can set conditional style	Support complex financial reports
cycle report	Independent data documentation capability, supports embedding analyzer charts, forms real-time data reports with fixed templates, and can regularly export support reports	Support combining word to form report documents
Data big screen	Supports self-configuration of large screens in a drag-and-drop manner, providing self-service configuration of styles, layers, linkage, jumps, filters, searches, 2D charts, 3D charts, forms, documents, 2D and 3D, templates, and data permissions. With more cases and template support.	Support large screens of assembled data through a variety of charts and materials
GIS capability	10+ mainstream map service support, 10+ GIS algorithm support, including trajectory algorithm, thermal algorithm, space-time accompanying algorithm, 5+GIS business scene precipitation, including situation awareness, urban governance, park management, power management, 20+ layer management and operational ability	Built-in gis map, supports 10 display forms, and supports configuration of map controls, views, routes, etc.
knowledge map	Built-in graph analysis capabilities, with experience in building knowledge graphs in industries such as industry, public security, and risk control	The world's top knowledge graph capability, but not yet integrated into the power platform

Comparison of Application Construction Capabilities

Application build ability	smardaten	Power Platform
theme settings	Preset 10+ themes, support custom themes, fine-grained theme customization, basically covering the granularity covered by css	Preset 20+ themes, support custom background color and background image, component layer supports configuration of fine-grained styles, basically covering the granularity covered by css
menu navigation	4 default layouts, support custom navigation	Support custom menu design
page design	Preset 10+ layout components, as well as free layout pages, such as lists, details, forms, charts, etc. can be freely combined in the page	Preset 10+ layout components, as well as free layout pages, such as input, display, chart and other components can be freely combined in the page, and support vertical and horizontal container pages to be nested and displayed
display view	The list page presets 5 commonly used list modes, 2 free layout canvases, the details page presets 7 layout components, free layout canvas, the form page presets 7 layout components, and the chart page presets 50+ chart components	列表支持通过画布容器，实现不同视图的编排, 预置3种图表类型，支持通过excel绘制的图表内嵌展示, 预置10+绘图组件, 预置10+媒体组件（地图、麦克风、音频、相机等）
权限控制	具备菜单权限、功能权限、数据权限以及组合视图应用	具备环境权限、应用权限、窗口权限、数据权限等，操作可细分至增删改查
业务逻辑	内置控制、响应、数据、变量、调用、服务编排类算子节点，以编排方式实现前后端逻辑复杂计算，并支持组件逻辑和页面逻辑的双重运算，同时计算与交互逻辑可组合调用，满足大部分企业应用场景。	内置14种变量、请求、控制等算子节点，结合上百种类型连接器和触发器，通过触发器+操作配置实现逻辑编排，并支持同步、异步处理，逻辑调试
业务流	支持审批流、数据流、业务流混合编排调用，更多支撑企业级复杂场景	支持自动化配置业务流，支持自定义数据流、逻辑流的图形化配置，全平台调用
模板打印	支持表单、列表打印	支持页面pdf打印
移动端支持	支持移动端自适应页面，适配h5，支持移动端特有布局和动作	支持移动端自适应页面，独立配置

产品服务能力对比

产品服务	smardaten	Power Platform
服务支撑	有丰富的学习资料（数睿社区）和认证体系帮助用户快速入门最终熟练掌握使用，但是仅限于中文；有产品售后策略，但没有分级细化；	有丰富的学习资料、论坛和认证体系，能够帮助用户入门；有完整的售后策略和售后支持费用版本
解决方案	目前主要提供智慧城市、应急、教育、工业等行业的解决方案；	主要提供的是平台和工具化能力，目前没有什么成熟的完整行业解决方案
产品生态	已经构建了应用市场，但尚未支持第三方应用发布，同时市场本身内容较为匮乏	主要在平台的能力生态上充分融合微软的生态，只有预制的流程和画布模型，解决方案层面没有应用市场；

为什么我更推荐 smardaten

对于产品选择没有更好，只有更合适

使用 Power Platform 进行企业级软件搭建很容易遇到以下瓶颈：

Power Platform 是由N个应用构成的一套开发产品，彼此之间功能相对独立；而且严重依赖微软的Azure云服务和微软系的数据存储。以及很多微软的开发框架，例如.Net框架
Power Platform 因为微软产品生态的原因，与其他系统集成则较为复杂
Power Platform是水平结构，一维的多个应用各有分工相互独立（特别是Power Apps并不能开发复杂应用，因此和Power BI 等没有直接关系），换句话说，用户不能扩展Power Platform本身（功能都是被限定的）
PowerApps 适合开发者或业务人员使用，需要一定的SQL编写能力，有一定的前端和后台能力，支持WebApp开发，对小程序等无支持
Power Platform 则需要把服务部署在云端，这对网络流畅性、数据访问的便利性、安全性都提出了挑战
产品定价与国际接轨，国内企业使用成本相对较高
完整应用的构建需要编写自定义函数或者代码，对开发人员而言门槛变高
缺少对数据层的生命周期管理能力

对比之下，smardaten 平台能力、数据能力、分析能力、应用构建能力都较强，由南京数睿数据科技公司历时多年精心实战打磨，已经服务国内数百行业龙头企业，产品力受到国内众多企业和开发者的一致认可，切入门槛适中，易学易用。

smardaten 社区版免费可商用，官方可供参考和学习的文档资料、实战案例教程非常丰富，容易上手，新手友好
一个平台覆盖业务中台、数据中台、物联中台的多个能力，大大降低采购和使用成本
smardaten 能够支持本地化服务部署，使用起来更安全，更放心；
smardaten 支持拖拽构建企业级应用及大数据能力，提供全栈式的大数据能力，轻松搞定软件在数据层面的开发管理与应用
除了传统厂商数据库，目前还已经支持多种国产数据库的落地开发
smardaten 支持高度定制开发，非常方便升级维护
smardaten 有着强大的辅助数据分析能力，助力企业更好更快提取数据内在价值
The smardaten platform has already provided a variety of commonly used AI technology components, greatly enhancing the AI capabilities and technical value of software products
smardaten's powerful IoT connection capabilities provide a better platform for the connection between the physical world and the virtual world, and perfectly meet the use scenarios of various types of software and hardware combinations

The smardaten community edition is free for commercial use and friendly for beginners

Whether it is an individual developer or an enterprise team, they can learn and use immediately; using smardaten tools well can effectively help individuals and enterprises release part of their productivity to focus on more refined business development and product polishing, smardaten The tutorials and official links are as follows. If you are interested, you can study and discuss together.

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