dabble db: simplicity without sacrificing flexibility

 As Business Ready evolves, our need to collect, manage and share data continues to grow. We decided against a traditional CRM solution to manage our contacts, partly because of price, but mostly because our needs extend far beyond simple contact management. Having the ability to share all of our data from several worldwide locations is critical for us, so we decided to explore Dabble DB.

Dabble DB allows users to create online databases. The possibilities are endless but typical examples for a small company include personnel management, staff calendars, sales pipelines, time tracking, contact management and event scheduling. What I loved most about Dabble DB was the simplicity and flexibility. Within minutes I was able to create a customized solution with the ability to analyze the data in whatever way I wanted.

I was recently contracted to perform an analysis of a relatively complex sales history for one of my clients. My test database was relatively small (345 entries with 24 fields for each entry) but the ability to slice and dice the data as required was priceless. I was able to import and merge data from two different sources almost effortlessly.  Of course, the old addage about data still holds true regardless of how advanced the tools are.  Garbage in = garbage out so I did have to spend some time scrubbing, but overall the process was very easy. Dabble DB provides users with three options to get started:

1. Copy & paste from an existing spreadsheet;
2. Import data from a website; or
3. Start from scratch.

Once loaded, Dabble DB makes searching and exploring data very easy, especially for those who are not familiar with databases. Intelligent filters are extremely powerful as users can rely on plain English to refine a view to show only relevant data. For example, instead of creating two filters “after 03/31/2008″ and “before 07/01/08″ users can filter using “last quarter.” Users can easily view data in several formats such as tables, charts, calendars or maps.  Building reports is simple and users can share specific views in several ways such as .PDF files, web pages or embedded elements in an existing web page.  Dabble DB also allows users to create forms for other people to add data to the existing database.  The most compelling feature about Dabble DB is the ability to edit the underyling data model and configure fields right from the data entry form.

“We think that this incremental evolution and improvement of your data model is super important.”