Full-featured database nearly finished. Unsure about next steps.
I'm striving to build a niche data analytics web SaaS with heavy backend data-processing using MySQL. Data is highly relational. Data design & core functionality is nearly completed by myself.
This webapp will need to automate data retrieval from a few websites using headless browser, and/or retrieve from their API's. I have a developer who specializes in file & data processing. He's quick and efficient for building out proof-of-concepts, but I'm concerned about his ability to develop scalable best-practice processes.
The webapp needs a frontend to allow clients to configure parameters at their account level & at the "product" level, which would affect SQL processes, and also provide a rich and highly flexible set of reporting options.
Other than MySQL, I'm framework & platform agnostic. Even that, I'm more than happy to switch to any other data solutions. For the app side, I only have minimal experience with RoR, Java, and .NET.
Problem I have now is: what are my next steps? I've drafted a very rough UI wireframe via Pencil that probably wouldn't suffice. For the file processing application layer & the frontend, does it matter which technology stack to use?
What qualifications would I be seeking in a developer, and then a designer?
You're tech stack is not going to matter. Pretty much any popular language/framework is going to work, PHP, Python, Ruby Java ect. all are likely going to be fast enough. This is going to be true in 99% of cases.
MySQL is also a fine choice. While some might scoff at it, it's perfectly fine even at a decent scale, especially so for highly relational data. In fact, a while back Uber moved from Postgres to MySQL, so it's at least performant enough to work at that scale.
It sounds like you're worried about the MySQL being the bottleneck, which is really only going to happen at a decent scale or if your code is horribly inefficient. If you're really worried about that you can have a DB guy come in a run the queries, but I wouldn't do that until you start to actually run into issues. You can also start doing stuff like read/write master and slave setups, but once again that's overkill until you have the need for it.
Thanks, that's quite relieving to hear about MySQL. I ramped up quite quickly with MySQL and DB optimization due to prior extensive experience with database architecture, DW & BI. I feel that I can competently modify the MySQL architecture for scaling when necessary, or at very least manage a data developer / DBA to do so for me. It's the application layer & front-end that concerns me the most since I have little clue how to move forward with that.
This is a question that I always asked myself in prehistoric times when I started my next "great SaaS". It turned out that there are so many things to do... oh my. That's why I started my current project.
It wouldn't probably meet your requirements because it's in Python and for PostgreSQL but there is other stuff can be found on the internet. Anyway, I would encourage to start from any SaaS boilerplate to avoid unnecessarily waste of money and time and integrate your code into it.
What's your current project? For existing SaaS boilerplates, how turnkey are these solutions? Can I just drop some package onto an AWS package, enable modules & tweak settings through a GUI, design frontends via visual builder, and off I go? Or is a moderate level of admin + coding required?
Hi, thanks for your questions.
My project is SaaS Idea (www.saas-idea.com), I've just started it and for now it's just very basic SaaS app template that you can download, build, and then extend with your own code.
I believe the existing solutions are not very turnkey, it's exactly what I'm trying to solve.
As for visual building, no, currently you can't do anything like that. First of all, it's not that simple due to the nature of SaaS - every SaaS is different. But you are not the first person who wants it to be so easy to create, so I definitely will think this direction.
You can probably live without a designer for now as they cost $$$. You probably don't want to spend $$$ but instead invest that $$$ into someone who can bring you direct value — get to launch.
For the designer, head to any one of the theme marketplaces and pick up a theme. ThemeForest has some good stuff. Get the extended/commercial license. It'll set you back ~ $1000.
Your current developer should be writing tests alongside the code to ensure that things are stable and reliable. If he's not, that's weird. Don't worry about scaling now. 99% of us will never have to scale. When you do have to scale, you'll know and you'll probably have resources to make it happen.
Qualifications may vary but if you find someone who's familiar with scraping and has built a SaaS before or done anything multi-tenant you should be fine.