I have been using Dabble DB for a week now, and I am still blown away by the quality of the user interface. For example, importing data from Microsoft Excel is done through a simple copy-and-paste of a cell area from Excel into a text area in Dabble DB. I am in the process of re-implementing the intalio.com website with it in order to provide syndication for the structured data that the site contains. This exercise is teaching me that two things are missing in Dabble DB right now: a public way to get data in, and a customizable way to get data out.

For data coming in, I would like to have a form editor like Wufoo that would allow me to build a public form that anyone could use in order to populate records into the database. Dabble DB allows me to share categories (tables) with users, but it would not work for registrations or surveys for example. Generating a canonical form similar to the one Dabble DB offers for letting database owners enter information might be enough as a first step though.

For data going out, I would like to be able to create JavaScript badges from the RSS feeds that Dabble DB produces. The best user interface I have seen for this type of work is FeedDigest. Granted, I could use FeedDigest today in order to achieve the same result, but my experience with service cascading tells me that it might not be the most robust solution. Ideally, the good folks at Dabble DB should develop a similar tool and integrate it natively within their application.

Last but not least, it should be noted that Zoho Creator already supports the development of public forms, and I expect them to quicly address my second requirement as well. In the meantime, a new Office 2.0 database has been released. It’s called MyownDB and seems to be similar to Dabble DB in spirit. This makes it the third contender in the Office 2.0 database category, and we shall keep in mind that three is definitely better than two.