September: BigQuery, MongoDB and full state sync in edit mode

A brief summary

• BigQuery integration: Connect your BigQuery datasets to Uify apps and work with them using the full power of ANSI SQL.
• MongoDB integration: Connect to a single instance or an entire cluster and perform read-operations with ease.
• Shared state in edit mode: App building became even more collaborative! You won’t just share the state of the canvas and its actions with other collaborators, but the full application state.
• Improved versioning: Textual release notes and a version number allow you to express the semantics of your releases transparently. Roll back to previous versions when needed.
• Inbox & commenting improvements: The workspace-level inbox and the commenting feature received an upgrade. We also added new features and fixed a few bugs.

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Let's break it down‍

BigQuery integration

Good news for all the data nerds out there: You can now integrate Uify apps with your datasets in BigQuery! All you need is a Google service account and the numbers crunching can begin. If you are familiar with writing SQL in Uify, you will feel right at home: Writing queries for BigQuery follows the same principles, including the ability to embed dynamic JavaScript snippets.

MongoDB integration

MongoDB is among the most adopted database systems. We worked hard on enabling you to use your collections in Uify. We now released a first version of this integration, offering various read operations (fetch, fetch-one, distinct, count and aggregate). You can connect to a single instance, a list of nodes and replica sets, or even make use of DNS SRV connectivity. Despite MongoDB being inherently schema-less, we included this integration into the schema explorer, doing our best to derive a schema based on the actual document structure in each collection.

Watch out for our October update, in which we will unleash the full power of MongoDB write operations!

Shared state in edit mode

Making collaborative app building enjoyable has always been a fundamental part of our product vision. With our September update, we made big progress on that: While the main operations, like adding or moving a component, modifying properties, or creating app actions, were already synchronized in real-time, it was still not guaranteed that collaborators have the same view all the time. For example, a data-fetch action might be triggered by one user, but not be visible to others. We have now introduced a real-time synchronization of the full application state in edit mode. Here is a sneak peek of what that looks like:

Improved versioning

Deploying changes to production has always been as simple as the click of a button. Understanding previous releases and their related changes however not so much. With our recent update we now enable you to manage the version history transparently. You can manage the app version number explicitly, following the established concept of semantic versioning. In addition, every release can be documented with a short summary of what was changed.

You can also roll back the production version to an earlier release in case there are critical bugs hidden in recent changes. Oh - and the confetti is still there of course!

Inbox & commenting improvements

The Uify inbox is a powerful feature that spans across all apps of your workspace. It gives access to important updates in comment threads and is even accessible programmatically. We have received lots of feedback for these features, and decided to take action: We applied a new design to both the inbox and the comment panel on the right-hand side. We also changed the inbox tabs for better usability, and allow you to mark all unread notifications as read with one click.

Ever resolved a comment by mistake? No problem, it is finally possible to revert that action. To save a comment for later, you can also now mark a comment as unread. We also resolved a few bugs that have been reported.

Additional improvements

• SQL multi-statement actions: SQL actions have been limited to a single statement. This is especially frustrating when it is necessary to execute multiple statements in a single transaction. Now you can embed multiple statements in any MySQL, PostgreSQL or Snowflake action! 🙌
• Table column inference: We changed how table columns are inferred from the data provided. It is now a deliberate user action to update the table structure, and you can now discard column definitions that you have no further use of.
• Resizable action editor: The action list and schema explorer in the action editor are now resizable, so you can adjust the layout to your particular screen size and preferences.
• Customizable SSH user: You can now provide a custom user for SSH tunnelling to your datasources instead of the hardcoded “uify” default user.
• Salesforce sandboxes: Instead of always connecting to live instances, it is now possible to connect to a sandbox instance for safer development and testing.
• Accessibility: Keyboard navigation between form inputs has been greatly improved, following a more natural flow of the layout.
• Bug fixes & minor improvements: On top of all the features mentioned above, we applied a total of 29 additional bug fixes and improvements! 🚀

We hope you will enjoy the new features and fixes! Any feedback is highly appreciated, feel free to drop us a note any time.

All the best,
Dom