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2016-04-21 20-09-55
J.
 
MVP
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Slim/AngularJS versus Outsystems, an personal experience
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Recently I POC’d a site with Outsystems for a non-profit organisation. It was a breeze and they were impressed with the speed, the look and feel and the working of the site.

Sadly their own site was a wordpress-site and being a non-profit organization I could not dare to tell the license costs of the platform. Thus I needed to come up with a solution that was open-source. After doing some research (and having played with php when it was still version 2) I came up with the following.

Backend:
Slim-framework to expose the mysql-database as REST-webservices.
This works like a breeze, it was easy to setup, especially the router is very lovely.
I love the speed of it!
Outsystems: get us the routing!
Downside, the horrible queries and looping through the rows to make it actual json.

Front-end:
AngularJS with some Jquery and Bootstrap.
This was a harder nut to crack, but I managed to create a site with it.
On a positive note, the ng-repeat is very useful to create tables vertical AND horizontal!
Downside, the logic can be very strange.

Conclusion 
In conclusion, the effort of making the site is really tough and prone for errors.
The lack of a proper IDE, the simple dev-ops is a big plus for Outsystems.
The speed of development is actually awesome with Outsystems.
I actually take it for granted nowadays, and doing this slim/angularjs project reminded me of the speed.
The raw-speed of SLIM framework actually impresses me, and there Outsystems is lacking imho.
There seems a bit of slowness in the REST-webservices. (perhaps we need to blame .NET for it J )
Generating tables with sideways with the columns is a missing part of Outsystems.

The biggest impact is that I simply have to use slim/angularjs due to the costs.
If the license just was, say 2400euro per year for a cloudinstance like the personalcloud, but without the “sleeping” part (and some extra features) I would convince the world to use Outsystems!
 
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24 Aug 2015
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Tmlewin .
@j I really understand your point. I have been in the same boat multiple times , when 70% of our client base are small- mid-level sized client . Many times I pitch outsystems to them , I get feedback like amazing oroductivity but no smart license for business operating at that level of tge food chain . Its only the top 10% of my clients that can surely put up with the cost associated with the platform. In terms of performance outsytems really has some work to do in terms of response rate and fluidity of apos built on top of the platform. Php plus angular is damn fast combo. Great post J
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24 Aug 2015
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2020-09-15 13-07-23
Kilian Hekhuis
 
MVP
Indeed, the licence costs are extremely steep. It would be great if there was a small business licence. This would also allow small software companies to create OutSystems software - because of the high licence costs, it's only possible to make software for big companies, and they either have their own software department, or they do business with large, established companies.
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25 Aug 2015
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Jeff Rozner

J. wrote:

Recently I POC’d a site with Outsystems for a non-profit organisation. It was a breeze and they were impressed with the speed, the look and feel and the working of the site.

Sadly their own site was a wordpress-site and being a non-profit organization I could not dare to tell the license costs of the platform. Thus I needed to come up with a solution that was open-source. After doing some research (and having played with php when it was still version 2) I came up with the following.

Backend:
Slim-framework to expose the mysql-database as REST-webservices.
This works like a breeze, it was easy to setup, especially the router is very lovely.
I love the speed of it!
Outsystems: get us the routing!
Downside, the horrible queries and looping through the rows to make it actual json.

Front-end:
AngularJS with some Jquery and Bootstrap.
This was a harder nut to crack, but I managed to create a site with it.
On a positive note, the ng-repeat is very useful to create tables vertical AND horizontal!
Downside, the logic can be very strange.

Conclusion 
In conclusion, the effort of making the site is really tough and prone for errors.
The lack of a proper IDE, the simple dev-ops is a big plus for Outsystems.
The speed of development is actually awesome with Outsystems.
I actually take it for granted nowadays, and doing this slim/angularjs project reminded me of the speed.
The raw-speed of SLIM framework actually impresses me, and there Outsystems is lacking imho.
There seems a bit of slowness in the REST-webservices. (perhaps we need to blame .NET for it J )
Generating tables with sideways with the columns is a missing part of Outsystems.

The biggest impact is that I simply have to use slim/angularjs due to the costs.
If the license just was, say 2400euro per year for a cloudinstance like the personalcloud, but without the “sleeping” part (and some extra features) I would convince the world to use Outsystems!
 

100% agree with this. trust me, the monkeys paw of the lower cost package will be the entree into many bigger accounts .                                                                                                                                                           "The biggest impact is that I simply have to use slim/angular js due to the costs.
If the license just was, say 2400euro per year for a cloudinstance like the personalcloud, but without the “sleeping” part (and some extra features) I would convince the world to use Outsystems!"
 



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02 Jun 2018
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Jeff Rozner

100% agree with this. trust me, the monkeys paw of the lower cost package will be the entree into many bigger accounts .                                                                                                                                                           "The biggest impact is that I simply have to use slim/angular js due to the costs.
If the license just was, say 2400euro per year for a cloudinstance like the personalcloud, but without the “sleeping” part (and some extra features) I would convince the world to use Outsystems!"
 

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02 Jun 2018
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2023-02-10 19-42-59
João Melo
 
MVP

Nice article.. been there a couple times. And same here with the 2400 euro "starter" package idea...

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03 Jun 2018
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2020-09-15 13-07-23
Kilian Hekhuis
 
MVP

Yes, would be nice, and no, ain't going to happen (likely). OutSystems has a corporate strategy that works out very well for them. To start selling to smaller businesses will give a lot of headaches. Be aware that any business with an IT department is cheaper off with OutSystems, as the licence costs won't exceed the costs of a single developer, which you can easily save by using the Platform.

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04 Jun 2018
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Peter Yao

Provide free on-premise licenses for non-profit organizations (software only, use forum for public support).

This is to broaden the adoption and increase the number of developers for the eco system.


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19 Jun 2018
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