Applications Overview

A Caspio app is a collection of interconnected objects that work together to support a specific project or business process. Caspio allows you to build user interfaces that are based on your underlying data and publish them online for your app users. This enables you to build, manage, and deploy applications efficiently in a structured platform. 

What Are Low-Code, No-Code? 

At Caspio, low-code and no-code are part of a development spectrum. While traditional application development relies entirely on manual programming, no-code completely eliminates the need for coding. Low-code falls somewhere in between, allowing users to build applications that can be enhanced with coding when needed, particularly for more complex scenarios like integrating with backend systems. 

Caspio’s goal is to empower users to build applications with little to no coding. Many applications can be developed entirely without code, while others may require some coding depending on the complexity and specific business needs. 

Caspio provides both low-code and no-code development possibilities within the same platform, allowing you to create applications according to your project requirements and your own skills. Here are some advantages of low-code/no-code development: 

• Faster time to market – The time needed to build and deploy applications is dramatically reduced, enabling businesses to respond quickly to changing needs. 
• Cost efficiency – By eliminating the need for specialized developers, Caspio lowers development costs, making it accessible to organizations of all sizes. 
• Enhanced collaboration – Multiple members of various teams can actively participate in app development. 
• Flexibility and scalability –  Caspio offers the flexibility to adapt and scale applications as business needs evolve, ensuring long-term sustainability. 

Application components 

Applications in Caspio are composed of several key components, each playing a specific role in the overall functionality and performance. Understanding these components is essential for app development and management. 

• Data: Tables and Views. Tables store the data used by an application, providing its foundation. They allow you to organize information into records and fields. Views provide a way to filter and display specific subsets of data from your tables, also by joining related tables together. By defining criteria for data selection, views help in creating customized reports and dashboards that meet specific business requirements. See Manage Data. 
• User interfaces (UI). Your app users need visual interfaces to interact with the data. With Caspio, you will be able to design the UI of your app visually, one screen or component at a time. 
• Users and permissions. Managing app users’ access to application data varies depending on which framework you choose. However, both frameworks allow you to precisely control who has access to what functionality and to what data.  
• Deployment. To make your app accessible to users, you must publish it, or in other words, deploy it. Caspio gives you several possibilities to do that depending on which of our frameworks you use – more details on that below. See Deploy Your Apps. 

Two Frameworks: Bridge and Flex 

Caspio offers two frameworks for building applications, Bridge and Flex. There are two main reasons for this: skill-level of the author and customization requirements of the app. Both frameworks are available in every account and both work on the same data structure. All other capabilities of Caspio, such as automation, integration, and more, are independent of the frameworks and apply to apps regardless of how they are built.

Bridge, Caspio’s established framework is currently powering thousands of applications globally for customers of all sizes. It’s great for more tech-savvy app authors who are open to do some light coding for increased control and flexibility. It boasts a very comprehensive feature set with many customization possibilities. While multiple deployment options are available, most Bridge applications are deployed on the customer’s own website or portal. This requires a few additional steps compared to our other framework, Flex, but the end result is an application that lives on your own website, while being fully powered by Caspio. Overall, it is a highly refined and optimized framework for various business applications. See Creating Apps With Bridge. 

Flex is our new and modern framework for application development. It focuses on ease of use and turnkey capabilities. If you are new to application building, Flex is the way to go. Application creation with Flex uses a visual interface that shows what your application will look like as you are developing it. Each user interface, called a DataPart, is for one task, such as a form, chart, or report. User management is turnkey, powerful, and fine-grained. The user interfaces for each user type (or role) are automatically within a segment of the app and can be deployed separately. Deployment is also much simpler and the entire app can easily be hosted by Caspio. See Creating Apps With Flex.

Both Flex and Bridge use the same data structure, ensuring that building an application in either framework will not lead to data silos or integration challenges. Here’s how they complement each other: 

• Unified data structure: Flex and Bridge share the same underlying data structure, which means you can build apps in either environment without worrying about data silos or migration issues. 
• Consistent functionality: Advanced features like triggered actions, tasks, DataHub, API are independent from the framework and therefore work in both Flex and Bridge. 
• Accessed within the same account: Both Flex and Bridge are available within the same Caspio account, allowing you to switch between frameworks effortlessly and manage your applications in one unified environment. 
• Enhancing Flex apps with Bridge features: It is possible to create hybrid applications that leverage the strengths of both Flex and Bridge. For example, you can build parts of your app in Flex while incorporating components built in Bridge, by embedding Bridge DataPages on Flex AppPages.
• Enhancing Bridge with Flex hosting: While Bridge DataPages can always be deployed via a direct link from Caspio, fully hosting a Bridge app directly on Caspio used to require manually creating menus and links to connect DataPages. This challenge is now simplified with Flex’s app hosting functionality. You can embed each Bridge DataPage on an AppPage and use Flex’s menu builder for your app navigation, and then deploy the entire segment.