Reference Guide

Data

Every Nutshell account (depending on your subscription) comes with its own database. You can create as many database tables as you need, and link those tables to as many of your apps as you like. Fancy three separate apps used by different teams, all accessing the same data? Piece of cake.

Data components are used to store, retrieve and manipulate data from your database. They turn Nutshell into a powerful mobile application development tool, capable of building and deploying seriously sophisticated data-driven apps, without having to buy and integrate a separate “back-end”Find more information on 'Back-End' here.

A Data component pulling information from a data-source to populate a form

Databases can be a complicated topic. This Reference Guide assumes that you know a little bit about storing and retrieving data already – perhaps having already used something Microsoft Excel or Access.

If you’re new to databases in general, you might want to brush up on some of the basic concepts first; perhaps start with WikipediaFind more information on Databases here as a primer. You’ll be able to make good progress once you understand the basic concepts, such as:

• What a database is
• How database queries work
• The four basic query types (CRUDFind more information on CRUD here)
• Common data types (like String, Boolean, Integer etc.)

If in doubt, get somebody more technical to help you.