No-Code or Low-Code PaaS?

January 21, 2016

Back in 2000, Caspio was founded on the premise that it’s possible and advantageous to create an all-inclusive service where business people can quickly build web based databases and applications without coding.

In those days, the word “cloud” still referred to the fluffy things in the sky and PaaS was a curious misspelling. Over the years, many insightful people have assigned various terms to what we do, the latest of which is “Low-Code Application Platform”. This claim is both true and false.

The vision of Caspio has always been and still is to eliminate coding. Today, it is entirely possible to create a feature-rich, multi-user custom application without ever writing a single line of code. On the other hand, depending on your particular needs and requirements, a lot more can be done through some light programming to enhance and extend your Caspio-powered application.

So yes, Caspio is a low-code platform and it’s also a no-code platform. It all depends on what you have envisioned for your app.

In fact, developers and coding enthusiasts can enhance a standard Caspio application in several ways:

RESTful and SOAP APIs that work with virtually any programming language.
SQL expressions for data lookup, calculation, and aggregation in reports.
Exchanging query string parameters between a Caspio app and non-Caspio app.
Endless possibilities through straight-up JavaScript.
Extensive enhancement options through JavaScript libraries and frameworks.

And more is planned in Caspio’s roadmap.

Essentially, either 100% of the application can be built using Caspio’s visual tools, or a significant portion of it can be built visually while the remainder requires some coding.

Certainly the advantages that Caspio brings to an organization go far beyond elimination or reduction of coding, but this is a topic for another day (and is already discussed elsewhere on this blog and on the Caspio website).

What do you have in mind to best describe a platform like Caspio’s? Here are some of the most commonly used terms: