Here is the second in our series on shareable databases. I have covered Zoho before (see – Zoho: A Suite of Many Online Apps for Small to Midsize Business). For this post I spoke again with Raju Vegesna, the Zoho Evangelist, about their two database tools. First, he said they are planning to integrate them into a single tool at the request of many customers. These clients liked the features that both tools had to offer and wanted the ease of use of Zoho Creator combined with the power of Zoho DB. So I asked Raju to tell more what both bring to the table.

Raju started with Zoho Creator. It is designed to let users easily create simple applications on the front end without writing a single line of code. The back end database is automatically set up by Zoho. In contrast, Zoho DB is a more powerful database tool that focuses on giving you control over the back end to create more complex databases. It allows you to run any SQL query. Raju said that in some ways Zoho Creator is like Visual Basic and Zoho DB is like Access. We then dove into each in more detail and Raju did a demo.

Zoho Creator lets you set up simple forms through drag and drop features. You can import data from Excel, use a template or start from scratch. We did the latter. For each field in the form you can set features like making it required or hidden. You can add actions such as email notification and trigger other actions such as updating an address in all other databases connected with the person when one database is updated. All of the database set up to support these fields and actions occurs behind the scenes automatically. If you need more complex actions you can use a scripting language. Here is the create database screen.

Zoho Creator lets you create different views of the data from the same form. It also allows you to deploy the Google apps engine once your forms are set up so you do not have to stay within Zoho. It allows you to take both your application and the data to Google apps.

Zoho DB also allows you to set up databases from Excel, templates or from scratch. You can take your Excel databases off the desktop and into the cloud in a shareable format with Zoho DB. You can publish the database in your blog or make it public in other ways. There are many formats for generating reports. You can make a SQL query in any dialect to conduct analysis and/or generate reports. These reports can be created through drag and drop as you decide which data sets go into the X and Y axis on charts. Then you can color code the charts.

You can also pull data from another site and do more complex manipulations, reports, and charts. Raju showed me a database he created using TechCrunch’s tech layoff data. He was able to go beyond what TechCrunch did with the data with different sorts and displays. At the same time, you can drill down through any of these visual displays to see the details behind the graphs. Here is chart of layoffs by month and location from Raju╒s Layoff tracker.

Raju said they are also planning to separate Zoho Reports from DB to make its capabilities available for other applications such as Zoho CRM. I asked him how they are doing in the down economy. He said quite well, especially some of their product lines which offer low costs alternatives to similar applications in the market. For example, Zoho CRM is picking up a lot of customers who are migrating from more expensive CRM tools. This is the good news – bad news of operating in the cloud. It makes it easier to switch. This is good news for those who take in the migrants. Zoho Business suite is also doing well as a low cost alternative to desktop business suites, especially since they provide the email hosting with the package.

Raju said they have four groups of clients in this market. First, there are students and individuals who want a low cost office suite. Then there are small to mid-size business that are also looking at reduced fees as fees per user can add up. Third, there are departments in larger organizations that are able to set up and run the Zoho apps without having to wait for IT to do the install. For this group, the Zoho apps are usually within their budgets. Finally, they are starting to get a few larger enterprises that want to achieve better collaboration between groups. For these clients Zoho will provide a version that can operate behind their firewall.

Raju also mentioned the new Zoho Marketplace (see above). Here third parties can offer for sale to others the Zoho databases they create with Zoho tools. Raju showed me a personal financial planner. Zoho lets them keep all the revenue from these sales, as they will still get revenue hosting the applications. In the first few months, 130 applications have been put into the Marketplace and they see this growing. This is a good idea. I think the combination of Zoho Creator and DB also makes a lot of sense.