Category:Overview

From LongJump Support Wiki

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) denotes software products that run on an infrastructure on the web. Not unlike web-based email, the entire database, application, and user data exists on a "cloud" defined by a service vendor.

This service cloud actually provides a platform service where fully featured Applications can be developed and deployed within an organization. This platform encompasses:

• The ability to configure data models, called Objects
• A pre-built user interface to:
  • Layout forms for data entry or updating information
  • Add, edit, delete, import data records
  • Search the database using filters, to create Views and Reports
  • Validate data based on formulas and business rules
  • Automate and schedule actions on the data, based on policies you create
  • Map out workflows that model your business processes, to automate routine decision-making
• Secured access to data based on permissions you grant to your users, teams and roles

PaaS enables you to create web applications quickly, because many of the heavy lifting like setting up hosting, servers, databases, user interaction processing, and building frameworks is all prepackaged, not unlike what web publishing tools like Adobe Dreamweaver have done for web design and development, or Microsoft Visual Basic has done for desktop office applications.

If you have a sense for organizing data, understanding how it is processed, and recognize the inherent workflows in your organization, you can build a powerful application without writing a single line of code. If you can write code, then much of the boring stuff (designing queries, writing rules, integrating with web technologies) is done for you, leaving you time to focus on key problems you’re trying to solve, complex coding you want to create, or just allow you to focus on solving more problems instead of getting stuck on a single project.