Building a CRM System: Does CRM Require Coding?

Are you curious to learn if CRM requires coding? Researching for answers to questions like do I need to know how to code to use a CRM system? What coding language is used for CRM systems? How difficult is it to learn CRM coding? Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important. 

Understanding the complexities of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) requires an in-depth knowledge of how businesses interact with customers. This includes how data is collected, stored, and used to improve customer experience. With a good background in coding, businesses can create custom CRM solutions that are tailored to their customer base.

By reading this article you will learn what is CRM system, does it requires coding and the key benefits. Also, we provided our top 10+ CRM systems in 2023 that don’t require coding. Let’s dive deeper into it!

What is CRM System and Does It Require Coding?

The answer to the question “Does customer relationship management require coding?” is “No, it does not” when it comes to maintaining client relationships.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is an effective technology used by businesses to better manage their interactions with prospects and customers. While some CRM systems need coding to be utilized, most do not. The majority of CRM systems are made with an intuitive, user-friendly interface that enables users to manage their customer interactions quickly and effectively without any coding knowledge. This enables even individuals with a minimal level of technical experience to utilize CRM systems to their fullest potential.

Benefits of CRM

CRM systems have several benefits and may assist your business in a variety of ways. Let’s dive deep into the key benefits that CRM could provide.

Benefit #1. Improved customer service

CRM systems were created to enhance relationships between businesses and their customers, and that is still its primary advantage. Tracking customers’ information such as demographics, purchasing history, and messages sent through all channels, allows businesses to gain easy access to all the information they need about their customers. This ensures that employees have all the necessary information to provide a superior customer experience, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.

Benefit #2. Increased sales

Using CRM systems can help you optimize your sales process, create a well-defined sales pipeline, automate time-consuming tasks, and gain visibility into all of your sales data. This can potentially result in increased sales and productivity. You can use CRM to define a dependable sales process that can be modified as needed. It also automates tasks such as lead nurturing and follow-up emails, saving time for your team. Finally, you can use the CRM to track and analyze your sales data, making it easier to find opportunities for improvement and maximize your sales.

Benefit #3. Improved customer loyalty

After you have acquired and converted leads, it is important to keep them as customers and foster customer loyalty. Low customer retention can have harmful effects on your business, such as reduced revenue or a disrupted cash flow. Utilize your CRM and the data it provides about your customers to promote repeat business. The CRM will offer sentiment analysis, automated ticketing, customer support automation, and user behavior tracking to help identify issues and promptly handle them with your customers.

Benefit #4. Extensive analytics

Having plenty of data about your customers is essential, but it is equally important to be able to interpret it and use it to your advantage. CRM systems can help you make sense of the data by providing built-in analytic capabilities. This allows for a deeper understanding of the data, as it is broken down into understandable metrics such as click-through rates, bounce rates, and demographic information. With this knowledge, you can measure the success of your marketing campaigns and make adjustments as needed.  

Benefit #5. Higher efficiency and productivity

CRM software utilizes marketing automation technology to streamline mundane tasks such as drip campaigns, allowing employees to focus on more complex work. This technology can help make sure that nothing falls through the cracks by ensuring that all important emails are sent to the appropriate recipients. Furthermore, CRM software provides a dashboard displaying how your business is running and where your processes can be optimized.

Benefit #6. Information database centralized

CRM software is great for helping businesses manage their customer relationships, providing a single, centralized database with all the information about customers that anyone in the company needs. Sales reps can quickly and easily see what products a customer has shown interest in if the customer has interacted with the company before, records of those interactions will be included in the CRM, which can be used to inform future marketing and sales strategies. This eliminates the need to search through old files and records and ensures a smoother and more efficient customer experience.

Benefit #7. Maintaining communication with prospective leads

Lead nurturing can be a time-consuming and complicated endeavor, with many steps and chances to communicate. Utilizing a CRM simplifies the process, notifying your staff when it is time to contact the prospect and recording every point of contact, from emails to phone calls.

Benefit #8. Improved customer segmentation

Having hundreds of contacts can be daunting and overwhelming. For instance, how do you determine which customers should get your email regarding your new product in-store? A CRM can automatically categorize your contact lists based on your chosen criteria, making it easier to find the ones you need to contact whenever it is needed. You can arrange contacts by place, gender, age, buyer stage, and other factors.

Benefit #9. Automated sales reports

The CRM software’s dashboard and reporting features make it easy for your team to collect and organize data about prospective and current customers. It also helps employees automate and manage their pipelines and processes. With the CRM, team members can track their quotas and goals, evaluate their performance, and check their progress on each project with ease.

Benefit #10. Improved sales forecasting

CRM software’s automated sales reports allow you to review your past performance and strategically plan for the future. With these reports, you can identify trends and gain insight into the potential of your future sales cycle performance. This information can help you adjust your goals and metrics accordingly. 

Benefit #11. Improved internal communication

A CRM not only helps your business communicate with customers but also allows your employees to communicate more effectively with each other. Through the CRM, employees can stay up-to-date on customer interactions, maintain a consistent brand voice, and send notes, alerts, messages, and emails in one easy-to-use system.

Top 10+ CRM Systems That Don’t Require Coding in 2023

Salesforce

When looking for the top CRM applications, you’ll likely come across Salesforce as one of the top choices for small businesses. What makes this software stand out is that it recognizes that businesses have different requirements, unlike other CRM solutions which offer bundles of features. With Salesforce, users can pick and choose which features they need, and can always add or remove features as needed. 

Flatlogic

Flatlogic provides a simple method for developing a custom CRM solution with complete control over the source code and scalability. An all-in-one CRM software, Flatlogics, aids businesses in streamlining their customer interaction and support procedures. It includes effective tools for automating marketing and sales processes as well as managing contacts, leads, and sales possibilities. Moreover, it has capabilities like data visualizations, tailored and automated emails, and automatic client segmentation. Businesses may monitor client interactions, foster connections, and streamline manual procedures using Flatlogics CRM to increase customer satisfaction.

Zoho CRM

Zoho was a cloud-based CRM platform, but over the years, it has evolved to become an all-in-one suite to help businesses manage their invoicing and customer management needs. Though not open-source, it can be integrated with other platforms via third-party apps. For example, Zapier can be used to connect to eCommerce platforms like Shopify. For small businesses, the Standard plan is recommended, which offers custom reports and analytics, lead scoring, webhooks, and more. This plan is suitable for startups or new businesses.

HubSpot CRM

In 2014, HubSpot launched its free CRM service, broadening its reach in a fresh direction. With this expansion, you can now seamlessly integrate marketing and sales operations into one platform. The HubSpot suite is not only ideal for running inbound marketing campaigns but also for enhancing customer connections and driving more sales. Moreover, the unlimited team feature enables multiple users to come together and form a productive team. Upon signing up for the HubSpot CRM forever free plan, you can choose your level of expertise with CRM software. Subsequently, you can gain a comprehensive orientation of the software and begin importing your earlier data, sorting contacts, and inviting team members. The HubSpot dashboard collection consolidates sales, marketing, service, and CMS, making it easy to manage. Additionally, you can take advantage of six unique sales reports that help track your monthly progress and keep the contact information organized in a centralized, customizable database. As a bonus, HubSpot CRM offers advanced features such as email tracking, deal pipelines, messenger integrations, and email templates – features not typically found in other free CRMs.

Bitrix24

If you’re searching for a free and open-source CRM, Bitrix24 is a great option. Even though the open source side is handled by a Bitrix24 partner, the cost-free features it provides are what make it such an attractive choice. It offers limitless feature records, sales tracking, email marketing, and more – all without charging a top-dollar price. With over 7,000,000 companies using Bitrix24, it has become a go-to tool. The only downside is the learning curve (even with the paid version) compared to platforms like Freshsales. Despite this, it is an ideal CRM software for small businesses that need collaboration software that doesn’t break their budget and still offers almost all of the advanced features. With this in mind, it’s an excellent choice for improving collaboration and communication, as well as managing clients with ease. 

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is an easily accessible CRM tool. It provides detailed sales-based reporting tools and a visually appealing user interface that makes it simple to track leads and contacts. The platform also offers automated call tracking and a chatbot feature, allowing for improved communication both internally and externally. This makes Pipedrive an ideal CRM tool for small to medium-sized businesses, providing a comprehensive solution that covers most of their needs. 

Insightly

Insightly is a great and budget-friendly option for businesses looking for an easy, free, and open-source CRM. It offers fast onboarding and a free lifetime plan and a comprehensive tracking system, perfect for newcomers. While it may have slightly fewer features than some of its competitors, Insightly is an excellent tool for carefully managing customer relationships and monitoring the sales pipeline to gain more insights into the sales process. The main dashboard provides detailed stats on sales and pipelines, and you can store up to 25,000 records, including contacts, leads, organizations, reports, and projects. All in all, I believe Insightly is a sensible choice for those who don’t need a lot of features and are looking to get started on a CRM right away.

Apptivo

Apptivo is an award-winning cloud-based CRM software that provides users with an extensive suite of 50+ applications to help them reduce inaccuracies, save time, and get access to essential information and tools to collaborate with their customers more effectively. This software offers a variety of services such as CRM, project management, invoicing, and much more. With over 200,000+ users, Apptivo is one of the most popular CRMs. It also offers plenty of integrations and solutions that make it stand out from the rest

SugarCRM

With over 50,000 companies using it and 7 million downloads, SugarCRM is one of the most sought-after CRM applications on the market. The application is available in 9+ languages and is capable of accommodating organizations of all sizes, from small startups to those with more than 10,000 employees. Open-source in nature, this CRM is highly customizable and adaptable to different structures and hierarchies. As such, it requires a dedicated team to manage, operate and maintain its smooth functioning. 

Nutshell

With Nutshell, you can streamline your sales process and optimize your efficiency. It has a variety of views to help you manage your leads and sales, including board view, chart view, list view, and map view. This powerful yet simple CRM tool is used by over 25,000 business professionals around the world to keep track of their customer data. 

Freshsales

Freshsales is a great option for those looking for a free and open-source CRM software suite. Focusing solely on scalability and sales, Freshsales can be used to engage with customers, close deals, and attract new sales. The free forever plan offers unlimited users, contacts, and premium support, including email, chat, and phone support. However, Freshsales Free is missing out on some advanced features like email tracking, behavior analytics, and reports. Though there is a minimal learning curve, it is best for startups, and not necessarily the best choice for small to mid-sized businesses. Overall, Freshsales is a good CRM to start with for getting a new lead and nurturing it throughout its life cycle. 

Copper

Those seeking essential features in CRM software such as email marketing, calendar/reminder systems, and client tracking should consider Copper. It offers a direct import of records from Gmail communications and allows users to sync meetings with contacts. Additionally, Copper’s integrations with most common applications such as Intuit Quickbooks, Slack, DocuSign, Zapier, and Mailchimp are especially beneficial for G Suite users. 

Summing Up

Although the major part of CRM software is created for non-technical users, coding experience is often not necessary. Businesses of all sizes may utilize CRM software to manage client contacts, streamline procedures, and enhance customer service thanks to pre-built templates, automated workflows, and drag-and-drop interfaces. Coding skills may be required for more intricate adaptations, such as unique integrations or reports.

The post Building a CRM System: Does CRM Require Coding? appeared first on Flatlogic Blog.

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Proactive Insights with Amazon DevOps Guru for RDS

Today, we are pleased to announce a new Amazon DevOps Guru for RDS capability: Proactive Insights. DevOps Guru for RDS is a fully-managed service powered by machine learning (ML), that uses the data collected by RDS Performance Insights to detect and alert customers of anomalous behaviors within Amazon Aurora databases. Since its release, DevOps Guru for RDS has empowered customers with information to quickly react to performance problems and to take corrective actions. Now, Proactive Insights adds recommendations related to operational issues that may prevent potential issues in the future.

Proactive Insights requires no additional set up for customers already using DevOps Guru for RDS, for both Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition and Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition.

The following are example use cases of operational issues available for Proactive Insights today, with more insights coming over time:

Long InnoDB History for Aurora MySQL-Compatible engines – Triggered when the InnoDB history list length becomes very large.

Temporary tables created on disk for Aurora MySQL-Compatible engines – Triggered when the ratio of temporary tables created versus all temporary tables breaches a threshold.

Idle In Transaction for Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible engines – Triggered when sessions connected to the database are not performing active work, but can keep database resources blocked.

To get started, navigate to the Amazon DevOps Guru Dashboard where you can see a summary of your system’s overall health, including ongoing proactive insights. In the following screen capture, the number three indicates that there are three ongoing proactive insights. Click on that number to see the listing of the corresponding Proactive Insights, which may include RDS or other Proactive Insights supported by Amazon DevOps Guru.

Figure 1. Amazon DevOps Guru Dashboard where you can see a summary of your system’s overall health, including ongoing proactive insights.

Ongoing problems (including reactive and proactive insights) are also highlighted against your database instance on the Database list page in the Amazon RDS console.

Figure 2. Proactive and Reactive Insights are highlighted against your database instance on the Database list page in the Amazon RDS console.

In the following sections, we will dive deep on these use cases of DevOps Guru for RDS Proactive Insights.

Long InnoDB History for Aurora MySQL-Compatible engines

The InnoDB history list is a global list of the undo logs for committed transactions. MySQL uses the history list to purge records and log pages when transactions no longer require the history.  If the InnoDB history list length grows too large, indicating a large number of old row versions, queries and even the database shutdown process can become slower.

DevOps Guru for RDS now detects when the history list length exceeds 1 million records and alerts users to close (either by commit or by rollback) any unnecessary long-running transactions before triggering database changes that involve a shutdown (this includes reboots and database version upgrades).

From the DevOps Guru console, navigate to Insights, choose Proactive, then choose “RDS InnoDB History List Length Anomalous” Proactive Insight with an ongoing status. You will notice that Proactive Insights provides an “Insight overview”, “Metrics” and “Recommendations”.

Insight overview provides you basic information on this insight. In our case, the history list for row changes increased significantly, which affects query and shutdown performance.

Figure 3. Long InnoDB History for Aurora MySQL-Compatible engines Insight overview.

The Metrics panel gives you a graphical representation of the history list length and the timeline, allowing you to correlate it with any anomalous application activity that may have occurred during this window.

Figure 4. Long InnoDB History for Aurora MySQL-Compatible engines Metrics panel.

The Recommendations section suggests actions that you can take to mitigate this issue before it leads to a bigger problem. You will also notice the rationale behind the recommendation under the “Why is DevOps Guru recommending this?” column.

Figure 5. The Recommendations section suggests actions that you can take to mitigate this issue before it leads to a bigger problem.

Temporary tables created on disk for Aurora MySQL-Compatible engines

Sometimes it is necessary for the MySQL database to create an internal temporary table while processing a query. An internal temporary table can be held in memory and processed by the TempTable or MEMORY storage engine, or stored on disk by the InnoDB storage engine. An increase of temporary tables created on disk instead of in memory can impact the database performance.

DevOps Guru for RDS now monitors the rate at which the database creates temporary tables and the percentage of those temporary tables that use disk. When these values cross recommended levels over a given period of time, DevOps Guru for RDS creates an insight exposing this situation before it becomes critical.

From the DevOps Guru console, navigate to Insights, choose Proactive, then choose “RDS Temporary Tables On Disk AnomalousProactive Insight with an ongoing status. You will notice this Proactive Insight provides an “Insight overview”, “Metrics” and “Recommendations”.

Insight overview provides you basic information on this insight. In our case, more than 58% of the total temporary tables created per second were using disk, with a sustained rate of two temporary tables on disk created every second, which indicates that query performance is degrading.

Figure 6. Temporary tables created on disk insight overview.

The Metrics panel shows you a graphical representation of the information specific for this insight. You will be presented with the evolution of the amount of temporary tables created on disk per second, the percentage of temporary tables on disk (out of the total number of database-created temporary tables), and of the overall rate at which the temporary tables are created (per second).

Figure 7. Temporary tables created on disk – evolution of the amount of temporary tables created on disk per second.

Figure 8. Temporary tables created on disk – the percentage of temporary tables on disk (out of the total number of database-created temporary tables).

Figure 9. Temporary tables created on disk – overall rate at which the temporary tables are created (per second).

The Recommendations section suggests actions to avoid this situation when possible, such as not using BLOB and TEXT data types, tuning tmp_table_size and max_heap_table_size database parameters, data set reduction, columns indexing and more.

Figure 10. Temporary tables created on disk – actions to avoid this situation when possible, such as not using BLOB and TEXT data types, tuning tmp_table_size and max_heap_table_size database parameters, data set reduction, columns indexing and more.

Additional explanations on this use case can be found by clicking on the “View troubleshooting doc” link.

Idle In Transaction for Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible engines

A connection that has been idle in transaction  for too long can impact performance by holding locks, blocking other queries, or by preventing VACUUM (including autovacuum) from cleaning up dead rows.
PostgreSQL database requires periodic maintenance, which is known as vacuuming. Autovacuum in PostgreSQL automates the execution of VACUUM and ANALYZE commands. This process gathers the table statistics and deletes the dead rows. When vacuuming does not occur, this negatively impacts the database performance. It leads to an increase in table and index bloat (the disk space that was used by a table or index and is available for reuse by the database but has not been reclaimed), leads to stale statistics and can even end in transaction wraparound (when the number of unique transaction ids reaches its maximum of about two billion).

DevOps Guru for RDS monitors the time spent by sessions in an Aurora PostgreSQL database in idle in transaction state and raises initially a warning notification, followed by an alarm notification if the idle in transaction state continues (the current thresholds are 1800 seconds for the warning and 3600 seconds for the alarm).

From the DevOps Guru console, navigate to Insights, choose Proactive, then choose “RDS Idle In Transaction Max Time AnomalousProactive Insight with an ongoing status. You will notice this Proactive Insights provides an “Insight overview”, “Metrics” and “Recommendations”.

In our case, a connection has been in “idle in transaction” state for more than 1800 seconds, which could impact the database performance.

Figure 11. A connection has been in “idle in transaction” state for more than 1800 seconds, which could impact the database performance.

The Metrics panel shows you a graphical representation of when the long-running “idle in transaction” connections started.

Figure 12. The Metrics panel shows you a graphical representation of when the long-running “idle in transaction” connections started.

As with the other insights, recommended actions are listed and a troubleshooting doc is linked for even more details on this use case.

Figure 13. Recommended actions are listed and a troubleshooting doc is linked for even more details on this use case.

Conclusion

With Proactive Insights, DevOpsGuru for RDS enhances its abilities to help you monitor your databases by notifying you about potential operational issues, before they become bigger problems down the road. To get started, you need to ensure that you have enabled Performance Insights on the database instance(s) you want monitored, as well as ensure and confirm that DevOps Guru is enabled to monitor those instances (for example by enabling it at account level, by monitoring specific CloudFormation stacks or by using AWS tags for specific Aurora resources). Proactive Insights is available in all regions where DevOps Guru for RDS is supported. To learn more about Proactive Insights, join us for a free hands-on Immersion Day (available in three time zones) on March 15th or April 12th.

About the authors:

Kishore Dhamodaran

Kishore Dhamodaran is a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS.

Raluca Constantin

Raluca Constantin is a Senior Database Engineer with the Relational Database Services (RDS) team at Amazon Web Services. She has 16 years of experience in the databases world. She enjoys travels, hikes, arts and is a proud mother of a 12y old daughter and a 7y old son.

Jonathan Vogel

Jonathan is a Developer Advocate at AWS. He was a DevOps Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS for two years prior to taking on the Developer Advocate role. Prior to AWS, he practiced professional software development for over a decade. Jonathan enjoys music, birding and climbing rocks.

Auto Updating Created, Updated and Deleted Timestamps In Entity Framework

In any database schema, it’s extremely common to have the fields “DateCreated, DateUpdated and DateDeleted” on almost every entity. At the very least, they provide helpful debugging information, but further, the DateDeleted affords a way to “soft delete” entities without actually deleting them.

That being said, over the years I’ve seen some pretty interesting ways in which these have been implemented. The worst, in my view, is writing C# code that specifically updates the timestamp when created or updated. While simple, one clumsy developer later and you aren’t recording any timestamps at all. It’s very prone to “remembering” that you have to update the timestamp. Other times, I’ve seen database triggers used which.. works.. But then you have another problem in that you’re using database triggers!

There’s a fairly simple method I’ve been using for years and it involves utilizing the ability to override the save behaviour of Entity Framework.

Auditable Base Model

The first thing we want to do is actually define a “base model” that all entities can inherit from. In my case, I use a base class called “Auditable” that looks like so :

public abstract class Auditable
{
public DateTimeOffset DateCreated { get; set; }
public DateTimeOffset? DateUpdated { get; set; }
public DateTimeOffset? DateDeleted { get; set; }
}

And a couple of notes here :

It’s an abstract class because it should only ever be inherited from
We use DateTimeOffset because we will then store the timezone along with the timestamp. This is a personal preference but it just removes all ambiguity around “Is this UTC?”
DateCreated is not null (Since anything created will have a timestamp), but the other two dates are! Note that if this is an existing database, you will need to allow nullables (And work out a migration strategy) as your existing records will not have a DateCreated.

To use the class, we just need to inherit from it with any Entity Framework model. For example, let’s say we have a Customer object :

public class Customer : Auditable
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}

So all the class has done is mean we don’t have to copy and paste the same 3 date fields everywhere, and that it’s enforced. Nice and simple!

Overriding Context SaveChanges

The next thing is maybe controversial, and I know there’s a few different ways to do this. Essentially we are looking for a way to say to Entity Framework “Hey, if you insert a new record, can you set the DateCreated please?”. There’s things like Entity Framework hooks and a few nuget packages that do similar things, but I’ve found the absolute easiest way is to simply override the save method of your database context.

The full code looks something like :

public class MyContext: DbContext
{
public override Task<int> SaveChangesAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
{
var insertedEntries = this.ChangeTracker.Entries()
.Where(x => x.State == EntityState.Added)
.Select(x => x.Entity);

foreach(var insertedEntry in insertedEntries)
{
var auditableEntity = insertedEntry as Auditable;
//If the inserted object is an Auditable.
if(auditableEntity != null)
{
auditableEntity.DateCreated = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow;
}
}

var modifiedEntries = this.ChangeTracker.Entries()
.Where(x => x.State == EntityState.Modified)
.Select(x => x.Entity);

foreach (var modifiedEntry in modifiedEntries)
{
//If the inserted object is an Auditable.
var auditableEntity = modifiedEntry as Auditable;
if (auditableEntity != null)
{
auditableEntity.DateUpdated = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow;
}
}

return base.SaveChangesAsync(cancellationToken);
}
}

Now you’re context may have additional code, but this is the bare minimum to get things working. What this does is :

Gets all entities that are being inserted, checks if they inherit from auditable, and if so set the Date Created.
Gets all entities that are being updated, checks if they inherit from auditable, and is so set the Date Updated.
Finally, call the base SaveChanges method that actually does the saving.

Using this, we are essentially intercepting when Entity Framework would normally save all changes, and updating all timestamps at once with whatever is in the batch.

Handling Soft Deletes

Deletes are a special case for one big reason. If we actually try and call delete on an entity in Entity Framework, it gets added to the ChangeTracker as… well… a delete. And to unwind this at the point of saving and change it to an update would be complex.

What I tend to do instead is on my BaseRepository (Because.. You’re using one of those right?), I check if an entity is Auditable and if so, do an update instead. The copy and paste from my BaseRepository looks like so :

public async Task<T> Delete(T entity)
{
//If the type we are trying to delete is auditable, then we don’t actually delete it but instead set it to be updated with a delete date.
if (typeof(Auditable).IsAssignableFrom(typeof(T)))
{
(entity as Auditable).DateDeleted = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow;
_dbSet.Attach(entity);
_context.Entry(entity).State = EntityState.Modified;
}
else
{
_dbSet.Remove(entity);
}

return entity;
}

Now your mileage may vary, especially if you are not using the Repository Pattern (Which you should be!). But in short, you must handle soft deletes as updates *instead* of simply calling Remove on the DbSet.

Taking This Further

What’s not shown here is that we can use this same methodology to update many other “automated” fields. We use this same system to track the last user to Create, Update and Delete entities. Once this is up and running, it’s often just a couple more lines to instantly gain traceability across every entity in your database!

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What is PHP?

Introduction: What is PHP

PHP (an acronym for Hypertext Pre-processor or the previous one Personal Home Pages) is a server-side open-source scripting language. It is great for dynamic content management, session tracking, databases, and has fantastic community support.

PHP is a weak dynamic typing language, meaning it auto determines a lot of implicit conversions, even though there may be a lack of precision or equivocal conversions. In 2020 PHP 8 came out. It has a JIT (just-in-time) Compilation, which sped up the work of the Preprocessor multiple times.

PHP is a popular programming language and is the foundation of such CMSs as WordPress (powers 43% of all the websites on the Internet), DRUPAL, Joomla, and the most popular E-Commerce Magento 2. Also, there are very popular PHP-based MVC Frameworks Symfony such as Yii2 (very popular in Russia) and Laravel (takes the 1st place in GitHub RANKING).

How PHP works

Let’s elaborate how the Hypertext Preprocessor works. The browser sends an HTTP request to a web server. Then the index.php file is generated, which is handled by the preprocessor. Finally, the web server receives the output and sends it back over the Internet to a user’s web browser.

Why use PHP

PHP is incredibly easy for beginners and provides multiple advanced features for professional programmers. With it, you can learn and start writing basic scripts in a short period. Here is the list of the best features:

Versatility

PHP is a server-side programming language. Therefore, you need to set up a server to work with it. This language is also platform-independent. You don’t need a specific operating system to use it because it works on any platform, whether it’s macOS, Windows, Linux. For that reason, this is why it may be deployed on various systems and platforms easily and inexpensively.  

Secure and swift

PHP used to be scolded for its ability to attack the site with SQL injection, but with the release of MVC frameworks, this is now impossible. The major advantage is that due to the wide distribution and support of the community, there are now multiple tools, frameworks, and security and cyberattack protection solutions available. The second equally major feature is speed, try to use versions 8 and up, as these versions introduced the JIT Compilation, which speeds up PHP.

Well-linked with databases

PHP provides an easy way to establish a reliable connection to almost any database. So it can instantly connect to MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or any other database.

Testing

Among programming languages, PHP has a reputation for being stable and reliable. Its code has been tested under a wide variety of real-world and experimental conditions. If there’s a possible error or shortcoming, chances are someone in the community has found a way to deal with it. There are numerous frameworks and toolkits which are helpful for secure, efficiency and effectiveness of web development.

Community

PHP has a very responsive online community. The official documentation contains feature guides, chats and forums, so you can quickly solve your problem if you get stuck.

Low-cost open-source software

PHP is a no-cost language that can significantly help you save on your development expenses. A lot of the development tools normally used with this language are open-source and available for free, so they keep the cost of the project down even more. Numerous frameworks offer Hypertext functionalities and make the development process easier and much better, for example, the most popular and widely used is Laravel.

Conclusion

Rasmus Lerdorf is a Danish-Canadian programmer who released the first version of PHP in 1994. It continues to be a widely used and actual language in web development. It has been available for quite a long time. Major companies like Slack, Meta (Facebook), HPVM, and Wikipedia use the language extensively. Web Hosting Platforms like BlueHost, Site ground run their hosting servers using Hypertext Preprocessor.

On the Flatlogic Platform, you can also use PHP when choosing the Laravel backend framework for creating your application. Afterward, you will get in a few minutes the Laravel CRUD admin panel with DataBase models and API.

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Welcome Snowflake Scripting!

The Snowflake Data Platform is full of surprises.
 
Since Snowflake got its start,
you have had the ability to create stored procedures. 
However, this capability was limited to using JavaScript to write those stored procedures.
Using JavaScript opens up great potential, but JS is a new language and some data engineers may
face a steep learning curve.
Well… not anymore. Let’s welcome SNOWFLAKE SCRIPTING!!!!!

What is Snowflake Scripting?

Snowflake has just extended their SQL dialect to allow programmatic instructions.
For example, you can now write conditional blocks:
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE TEST(LINE VARCHAR);
INSERT INTO TEST(LINE) VALUES(‘FIST LINE’);

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE $$
DECLARE
COUNT INT;
BEGIN
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO :COUNT FROM TEST;
IF (COUNT < 2) THEN
INSERT INTO TEST(LINE) VALUES(‘SECOND LINE’);
RETURN ‘INSERTED’;
END IF;
RETURN ‘NOT INSERTED. COUNT = ‘ || :COUNT;
END;
$$;

Ok. Now that we’ve seen a conditional block, let’s see in more detail what Snowflake Scripting brings to the table.

Variable Declaration

Snowflake Scripting provides a declare section just before your
BEGIN/
END block. You can
declare variables in that section. If you want them to have an initial value, you can use the DEFAULT clause. Here’s an example:

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE $$
DECLARE
VAR1 VARCHAR DEFAULT ‘Hello World’;
BEGIN
return VAR1;
END;
$$;

You could also declare them inline with your code using a let statement and “:=”. Here’s an example of that:
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE $$
BEGIN
let VAR1 VARCHAR := ‘Hello World’;
return VAR1;
END;
$$;

Passing variables to SQL statements in Snowflake Scripting

Binding variables is something that was a little more complicated in the JavaScript world. But in Snowflake Scripting, it’s super easy to
pass variables to SQL statements. Just remember to use a semicolon (‘:’) before the variable name as shown here:

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE
$$
BEGIN
let VAR1 VARCHAR := ‘Hello World’;
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE TEST AS select :VAR1 as LINE;
END;
$$;

 

Reading values into variables

Retrieving results is also easy. You can
read values into a variable as shown below, but just like before, remember to use a semicolon (‘:’) character before the variable name.

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE
$$
BEGIN
let VAR1 INT := 0;
select 1000 INTO :VAR1;
return VAR1;
END;
$$;

This will print something like this:
+—————–+

| anonymous block |

|—————–|

| 1000            |

+—————–+

And what about non-scalar values? What about doing a query?
That can be done too:
execute immediate
$$
BEGIN
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE MYTABLE as SELECT $1 as ID, $2 as Name FROM VALUES(1,‘John’),(2,‘DeeDee’);
LET res RESULTSET := (select Name from MYTABLE ORDER BY ID);
LET c1 CURSOR for res;
LET all_people VARCHAR := ;
FOR record IN c1 DO
all_people := all_people || ‘,’ || record.Name;
END FOR;
RETURN all_people;
END
$$;

And it will print something like:

+—————–+

| anonymous block |

|—————–|

| ,John,DeeDee    |

+—————–+

The results from a query are called a
RESULTSET. To iterate on the results of a query, you can open a cursor for that
RESULTSET and the user a
FOR with the cursor variable.

Conditional Logic

Snowflake Scripting brings operators to branch on conditions. You can use both
IF and
CASE. For example:
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE
$$
DECLARE
VAR1 INT DEFAULT 10;
BEGIN
IF (VAR1 > 10) THEN
RETURN ‘more than 10’;
ELSE
RETURN ‘less than 10’;
END IF;
END;
$$;

With this being the result:

+—————–+
| anonymous block |
|—————–|
| less than 10    |
+—————–+
Snowflake Scripting can be
super convenient to
 simplify some administrative tasks.
For example, I usually have this code on a Snowflake worksheet and I need to change it each time I need to create a test database.
create database database1;
create warehouse database1_wh;
create role database1_role;
grant ownership on database database1 to database1_role;
grant ownership on schema database1.public to database1_role;
grant ownership on warehouse database1_wh to database1_role;
grant role database1_role to user USER1;

I can use a Snowflake Scripting block and then I only need to change the database and user 🙂
execute immediate
$$
declare
client varchar default ‘database1’;
user varchar default ‘user1’;
sql varchar;
begin
execute immediate ‘create database if not exists ‘ || client;
execute immediate ‘create warehouse if not exists ‘ || client || ‘_wh’;
execute immediate ‘create role if not exists ‘ || client || ‘_role’;
execute immediate ‘grant ownership on database ‘ || client || ‘ to ‘ || client || ‘_role’;
execute immediate ‘grant ownership on schema ‘ || client || ‘.public to ‘ || client || ‘_role’;
execute immediate ‘grant ownership on warehouse ‘ || client || ‘_wh to ‘ || client || ‘_role’;
execute immediate ‘grant role ‘ || client || ‘_role to user ‘ || user;
end;
$$;

Snowflake Scripting for me and all of us here at Mobilize.Net is a game changer. It really makes it easier for people coming from Teradata, Oracle, or SQL Server to start enjoying the Snowflake Data Platform.
As a matter of fact, Mobilize.Net
SnowConvert is being updated so you can start modernizing your
Oracle,
Teradata, and SQL Server to Snowflake Scripting.  So we hope you enjoy it as much as I am enjoying it.
Thanks for reading!

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