I'm the IT volunteer guy at a small charity that feeds the poor and other supportive services. We have an old FileMaker Pro DB app that is broken and needs replacement. My budget is darn near nonexistent. We don't need complex apps; mostly tracking apps that keep records of our services.
I've dabbled in MS Access development and have user level experience with Oracle and FileMaker Pro.
I need a point and click development environment that captures data and generate reports I have no backend SQL experience but I have a community of SQL programmers who can provide minimal technical support from time to time.
My question to the group is this, given the above statements, is Knack a platform that can help an organization like mine and how are the cost issues? Thank you.
Hi Joseph,
Knack is a great tool. It is very easy to create and manage quite complicated databases with no SQL skill at all. It helps if you understand the principles of databases, as it makes it easier to get the reports you want, and if you have some complex needs, a good logic brain will help find a way to get round any issues. As Dean said, knack is easy to get started and find your way.
The main downside is you have very little control over the look of things, so if there any public-facing elements you are pretty much stuck with the basics - you can change colours and hide and show various things using style sheets and javascript, but your data is always gonna show in a full width table. The more confident you get, the more frustrated by it you will be, but as you say your keeping it quite simple so I would give it a go.
That said, most of the others are the same, and this is far easier to use and way cheaper than the likes of caspio etc. 7/10 after about a year of use!
I can't imagine it wouldn't meet most of the needs you articulated. You won't need any SQL programming as all the db connections and queries are basically written for you and most of the views are merely drag and drop with various levels of options to filter and present the data you wish to display. The learning curve is pretty fast once you get the hang of it and know the basics. You can literally create several tables (objects) and connect them to forms and other styles of views in a matter of minutes. Focus on your data structure as that drives everything else. You get 20,000 records with the basic plan so that is your main issue as the number of records you will be creating will drive your cost structure.