[HN Gopher] Show HN: Airforms - never build another CRUD app
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       Show HN: Airforms - never build another CRUD app
        
       Airforms is a database form builder. You can lower software
       development costs by using Airforms instead of developing custom
       CRUD applications to enter and update data. Airforms lets you build
       forms using a simple drag-and-drop interface. No coding skills
       needed.  Airforms was built from the ground up to support
       relational databases. Joins and lookups, and query parameters
       including multi-valued and cascading parameters are supported.
       Airforms also includes a graphical query builder, and tools for
       browsing database schema, relationships and data. An automatic
       database diagram generator is also included.
        
       Author : airforms
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2022-10-25 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (airforms.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (airforms.com)
        
       | diceduckmonk wrote:
       | The "never build another CRUD app" claim is a little too wide of
       | a net. There's no mention of invoking 3rd party APIs here.
       | 
       | The majority of apps aren't just backed by a single source of
       | truth, but aggregating many. That aggregation process can be done
       | offline rather than on-demand in real-time, but you still need a
       | separate ETL process to pull that data.
        
         | airforms wrote:
         | You are right, 3rd party APIs are not supported. Only SQL
         | databases are supported.
        
       | yodon wrote:
       | It sounds like your target user is quite technical if they know
       | terminology like CRUD well enough for it to be the first thing
       | you discuss on the page, as well as "Joins and lookups, query
       | parameters including multi-valued and cascading parameters, are
       | all transparently supported."
       | 
       | You might consider whether either your marketing text is too
       | technical for your target user, or, if not, whether your target
       | user is sufficiently technical that they are looking for a low
       | code or no code application for reasons other than that they
       | don't know how to write code (as in listing "No coding skills" as
       | the second big focus target on the page might not be right given
       | the rest of the page's focus).
        
         | airforms wrote:
         | Good feedback! In the beginning we expect early adopters will
         | be technology enthusiasts, so the marketing text is oriented
         | towards them. Later, as the mainstream begins to adopt the
         | product we plan to adjust the text accordingly.
        
       | thedangler wrote:
       | Need more example of the form builder. What is availble, how does
       | it handle errors? Can you add show hide logic based on a field
       | value? Is there form logic at all? What form fields are allowed?
       | Lots of unknowns.
        
         | airforms wrote:
         | To handle errors Airforms supports extensive validation
         | options.
         | 
         | Regarding show/hide based on field value -- this is
         | accomplished via "rules", where you build conditions
         | graphically. This is not enabled in the current build, but is
         | coming in November.
         | 
         | Common types of form fields such as radio, checkbox, textbox,
         | textarea, combobox, date and so on are supported.
         | 
         | Please contact us via the email address at the bottom of the
         | web site if you would like to discuss your specific scenarios.
        
       | castillar76 wrote:
       | Looks interesting, and potentially something I wouldn't mind
       | paying for if it works well. However, there's a steep price
       | differential there because you require "20 users minimum" for
       | your $5/user/month plan. So the price goes from free to
       | $1200/year, which is a pretty sharp step upwards.
        
         | airforms wrote:
         | Thanks for your feedback. What would be more reasonable, in
         | your opinion?
        
           | melony wrote:
           | Offer a flat rate per user. At $5 dollars per month you are
           | not losing money. Don't overprovision your backend. You can
           | increase it to $6/7 per seat depending on what users are
           | willing to pay.
        
       | saaaaaam wrote:
       | One of my businesses is just me. I don't need 20 users. I'll
       | never need 20 users. But you don't allow business use.
       | 
       | My other business is 5 people. We'd never need 20 users. I'd need
       | two or three max.
       | 
       | I'd love to use this. But I can't, because I'll break your T&Cs.
        
         | airforms wrote:
         | Thanks for your feedback. We'll introduce an in-between plan to
         | solve this problem.
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-25 23:02 UTC)