A Behind the Scenes Look at Zoho Creator

A Behind the Scenes Look at Zoho Creator

In this post, I want to provide a behind-the-scenes look at Zoho Creator, a sense of what all of our engineers are doing.

First, to step back, Zoho Creator was born of an idea I had way back in 2002. I sketched out the underpinning of a programming language, with some strongly held convictions born of my own experience. In the beginning, that language had no syntax at all - it was living purely as a set of database tables. In programming language parlance, I had defined the "abstract syntax" of the language, without bothering to define a concrete syntax. In a way, the Deluge language had soul, but no body yet.  I started an experimental project some time around 2003-2004. Zoho Creator itself was launched in 2006. 

Unlike competing systems born at that time, Zoho Creator was not simply a form/view builder. It always had more power than that, as expressed by Deluge, which is why it has endured and thrived. 

The most important aspect of evolution over the years has been in the runtime environment. Deluge has evolved from an interpreter to a just-in-time compiler, which was essential in achieving decent runtime performance. This took a fairly substantial effort, many many staff-years of R&D. We still want to speed it up much more, and there is ongoing R&D work in caching, scheduling and so on to speed things up further.

Scalability is another major area where we have spent a substantial amount of effort, consuming the majority of our team's time. Originally Deluge ran only on an SQL database. Today, it uses many different kinds of storage systems underneath, using each for what it does best. Distributed file systems, NoSQL systems, caching systems and of course SQL databases all play a role. We have also done integration with Zoho Reports, which uses is own engine underneath.

Now consider these two big items: moving from an interpreter to a just-in-time environment, and expanding beyond SQL database to multiple forms of storage. Normally these would have been highly disruptive to application developers, because we are basically doing brain surgery on the core system. The changes are essential because that was the only way we could keep the environment scaling and offering acceptable performance, while keeping our infrastructure costs reasonable so we can continue to be affordable to our growing user base.

We have pulled these off without major disruptions. I acknowledge we have had disruptions but I think the vast majority of our users, certainly any fair-minded observer, would agree they have been minor, and they were fixed fairly quickly.  While any disruption is painful to our user community, and we take our responsibility of running this platform seriously, I want to emphasize that this whole cloud platform technology is still evolving rapidly, and a lot of R&D effort is going into it to make it really bullet-proof.  This is true not just in Zoho, but across the industry. 

Now what is ahead over the next few years? I am personally working on what I call Deluge NG - the next generation of Deluge that I hope would offer much more expressive power, while at the same time being as accessible as Deluge today. My goal is to empower the "casual programmer" or even power user to get a lot more done, without having to get a Computer Science degree. It is still early days on Deluge NG, but as it matures, I will post a series of articles on it. We will offer an experimental version of it online, running on a separate instance from the present Creator, so people can get a taste of what is coming. 

For those technically inclined, the driving theme of Deluge, present in an underlying, unexposed form in the present version, but fully brought to the surface in Deluge NG, is the idea of a fully queryable type system. Basically every type, every piece of data, in your program is fully queryable in Deluge, using a very expressive query syntax. The vision behind this queryable type system is that most of what you express in loops should really be queries on your data, and it is the lack of query power in languages that forces you to build explicit loops. For a variety of reasons that I won't get into here, explicit loops are a major design smell in my world, and I want our Deluge developers to be able to avoid them as much as possible. 

I will conclude this post with one thing: Zoho Creator is the most important, most challenging piece of technology developed by Zoho. I have personally spent a decade of my technical life on it. It still has a long way to go to fulfill my original vision, but programming language platforms are hard. We have taken up this challenge because we have deeply held convictions on this subject, a near-religious belief that we can redefine the way we create world-class business applications. As with any religious belief, faith is needed; without that faith, nothing worthwhile is possible.

Sridhar



    • Sticky Posts

    • Zoho Creator - 2023 Release Projection 1

      Hello everyone! A very Happy New Year to you and your family. Hope you're all good and having a great time using Zoho Creator to make your lives easier and your businesses prosper. 2022 was an action-packed year for us at Creator, and we hope to continue

    • Zoho Creator User Group meetups in a city near you! - Oct - Nov, 2023

      Greetings from the Zoho Creator team! We're hosting a series of Zoho Creator meetups in various cities across the globe, and we'd love to meet you there! Our meetups are a great opportunity to network with industry peers, exchange ideas and best practices,

    • Zoho Creator - 2023 Release Projection 2

      Hello everyone! Time truly flies when you're having an incredible journey, and today we mark the completion of an eventful and action-packed six months. It feels like just yesterday when we embarked on this adventure together with the launch of our new

    • Upcoming Updates - August 2022

      Hi all, Greetings from the Zoho Creator team! Today we've got news for you on some exciting updates. And rest assured— there’s more to come! In this post, we'll be going over the upcoming features and improvements for this month as mentioned below. A

    • Introducing Zoho Creator's v2 APIs

      Hello App Creators, Welcome to Zoho Creator's v2 APIs! This post will serve as the central point for migrating implementations of Creator's current APIs (v1) to v2. Improvements that v2 brings OAuth-based authentication, which is more secure than the

    • Recent Topics

    • A Question about Email Handling (Sending and Receiving)

      Hello! I was looking into setting up Email Aliases for my domain that I purchased a while ago through Zoho Mail. I set up a singular alias already and have it linked with Gmail, and it seems to be working out well. However, I set up another alias today,

    • Kaizen #201 - Answering Your Questions | Webhooks, Functions, and Schedules

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to another post in the Kaizen series! We are incredibly grateful for all the feedback we received, and as promised, we will answer all the queries in this Kaizen series. Last week, in our 200th post, we addressed one of the

    • Zoho Projects Strict Dates for Tasks

      Hi Zoho Projects team, I would love to see a feature to allow Strict Dates for Tasks. Sometimes in projects you have dates which must not move, even if predecessor Task dates change. For example, perhaps you need to book access to a facility to perform

    • No Mark as filed buton in GSTR -3b

      We are filing our GST in GST portal -and want to mark GST in Zoho books as filed. It is possible to mark GSTR 1 as filed through Mark as filed button. But there is no such button in GSTR-3B.  How to mark corrosponding GSTR-3B as filed?

    • ranking by drag the choices instead of rank by number

      is the option of draging the choice is available instead of selecting the ranking number for each choice?

    • TASKS - Dashboard to show ALL Tasks from ALL apps.

      The Unified Tasks View is useless without the other main zoho apps (Desk, Books & even FSM now) We need to see all our tasks under on pane of glass. The Zoho developers are out of touch with real business workflows. So how it was designed they want us

    • Function #13: Transaction level profitability

      In Zoho Books, the Profit & Loss report provides valuable insights into the overall profitability of your business, indicating whether you have made a profit or incurred a loss. However, there may be occasions when you wish to assess whether a specific

    • Zoho CRM with Sap Business One

      I need information about integration CRM with Sap BO, thank.

    • Allow bill to nest multiple projects

      A bill (purchase) is more often than not used across multiple projects and this functionality is missing and very urgently needed for accurate reporting of purchases across projects

    • Amazon invoice in Zoho Books

      I have just made my first few sales on Amazon India. Amazon Seller account generates invoices for the sales made on Amazon. These invoices are sent to customers also. Now when I was only making offline sales, I used to create Invoices in Zoho Book. Now

    • How can I change iOS display setting at night?

      It seems like at night the two light daytime settings themes (white with blue on top or just white) are not available and I am forced to choose among a few other colours that I really don’t want, I.e., black, blue or orange. Is there a way for me to always

    • Celebrate WWW day with Zoho Desk

      Let's recall the times when we learned 'WWW' stands for World Wide Web. Whether you like to call it wuh-wuh-wuh or double-u double-u double-u, or World Wide Web, we all owe a lot to this groundbreaking invention that reshaped how we connect, communicate,

    • The power of camaraderie

      In the days before the internet boom, conversations happened face-to-face or over the phone. Phone calls were precious; every minute counted, and every word mattered. We looked forward to those moments of real connection. Even today, nothing quite matches

    • Message Content is missing/invalid fault

      We cannot create a complete template over zoho. Some features - like button adding - is missing. The templates are created on Zoho and edited on Meta to solve the problem. But still then, some features cannot be used and the message returns this failure

    • Können bereits gesendete Kampagnen im Nachhinein einer Mailing-Liste zugeordnet werden, ohne dass die Kampagne erneut versendet wird?

      Wir haben unsere älteren Kampagnen in Campaigns über Kontaktkategorien versendet. Dann haben wir umgestellt auf Mailing-Listen, damit alte Kampagnen auch in einem Archiv aufgerufen werden können. Jetzt ist die Frage, ob die Kampagnen, die über die Kategorieauswahl

    • Newsletter Templates Are Not Mobile Responsive

      Hi, I've already submitted this request to ZOHO once this morning, but for some reason your system logged me out, wouldn't accept my username/password login, and isn't showing any evidence that I've submitted this issue. So here we go again... I am under the impression that your newsletter templates are supposed to be mobile optimised: https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/blog/responsive-email-marketing.html This is clearly not the case, as the last 2 newsletters I've created in Campaigns look perfect

    • Digest Juillet - Un résumé de ce qui s'est passé le mois dernier sur Community

      Bonjour à toutes et à tous, Zoom sur les nouveautés de juillet dernier au sein de Zoho Community France. Zoho Commerce vous propose une expérience améliorée grâce à sa nouvelle interface ergonomique et à ses fonctionnalités avancées, conçues pour faciliter

    • 100 Rows in a Subform is too limited

      We have a custom Module in CRM called Price Sheets, when we get a PO from a client we add the items from the PO to it and then check with our vendors for pricing and add our margin etc And after it is complete we have setup custom scripts to create a

    • Uninstall unattended agent

      Hello, I'm testing many use case before we purchase assist for our remote support. While we are testing what is the proper way to uninstall agent?  I did uninstall from systray, from windows control panel but still ZohoURservice is running. How can I uninstall client side?

    • Zoho Commerce Down?

      Is anyone else's storefront down at the moment? Ours has been down for at lease an hour.

    • Zoho Projects iOS app update: Dashboard widget on the home screen

      Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce the 'Dashboard' widget in the latest version(v3.10.8) of the Zoho Projects iOS app. Dashboard widgets allow you to view the project progress visually without having to open the app. The widget enables you to

    • Idea: Workflow Rule Trigger Only When Subform Row Is Updated (Thanks to New Inline Row Feature)

      Hi Zoho team and community, With the recent update to Zoho CRM, we can now add or delete rows inside subforms without entering edit mode, using the inline Add row button. This is a fantastic improvement for user experience — seamless, fast, and efficient.

    • Auto add new section based on document choices

      Hi team, I'm wondering if the below is a possilibity within Zoho sign. We have an application process to become a customer of ours, we currently use Zoho Sign to manage this application and this works quite well. However, if the customer indicates 'YES'

    • Change rate after xxxx kilometers

      Is there a way to change the miileage rate after a certain mileage. After 5000 kilometers, we want the rate to automaticly change. Thank !

    • Subform Entry Limit from a Subform Field (A different Subform on the same Form)

      Hi, I would like to be able to use a Subform 1 Field as the Dynamic Entry Limit for Subform 2. Even better would be able to use some code with the values, so for example using the Subform 1 Qty Field as the Max Entry limit for Subform 2, BUT only the

    • Slow Zobot response time

      Hi, We launched the Zobot on our site to sit along with the regular Live Chat but had to take the Zobot down as the response time was very slow. The bot was slow to begin then once the chat had been initiated the response was very slow. The bot typing

    • how to show data of 3 table in pivot

      Based on engineer name i want to get the data from 3 different tables like Service , amc, installation , but Every table contain Engineer name As Common , based that from the service table i want to take service amount , and count of service based on

    • Custom Status for Purchase Orders

      Currently Zoho books has functionality to create custom statuses for Sales Orders. Can this be extended to include custom status for purchase orders as well? It was a great decision to add this functionality to sales orders. Our use case is for tracking

    • Ask the Experts 22: Scale up your customer support with integrations & extensibility

      Hello everyone! The foundation is set. Build the beams. Raise the pillars. Set the walls. The Zoho Desk architecture stands tall. Let's discuss integration within Zoho Desk, extensions from the Marketplace, creating connections between Zoho Desk and other

    • Is there no way to duplicate an entire workflow or even custom function across multiple departments?

      Is there no way to duplicate an entire workflow or even a custom function from one department to other departments, like it is done for field duplication from one department layout to other department layouts?

    • Automated reply on any new ticket raised by customer

      Hi ZohoDesk team, Can we set up an automation so that whenever a new ticket is created against our support email; ZohoDesk immediately sends our standard acknowledgement, including the expected TAT for resolution? If that’s possible, could you share the

    • Zoho equipment rental - just like Booqable

      Hi Zoho Team, is it possible to create a module or a system like booqable? our business starts renting our IT equipment assets that have been recently used for Events and Projects, we are having ZOHO books so its easy to integrate if you create one. Booqable

    • Profit Margin Scheme

      I'm a tourism company operating in the aviation and outbound tourism sectors. Typically, taxes are 0% as our operations are outside the country. However, the state has now imposed a tax on the profit margin. This means if the selling price of an airline

    • Visibility and Enforcement for Outdated Plug Parameters in Zobot Canvas

      Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, Greetings, We’d like to suggest an important usability and quality improvement for working with Plugs inside Zobot. Current Behavior: When we update the code of an existing Plug, any Zobot card using that Plug requires manual resaving.

    • Announcement: Zoho DataPrep to Deprecate Password-Only Authentication for Snowflake Connections on July 31, 2025

      As part of our ongoing commitment to security and in alignment with Snowflake's pledge to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Secure by Design initiative, Zoho DataPrep will no longer support single-factor password authentication.

    • The same Contact associated to multiple Companies - Deals

      Hi, I would like to know if there is an option to associate the same contact with multiple companies (two or more) deals, using the same contact details for all. This is because we have contacts who are linked to different companies or branches of the

    • Text on Zoho Sign confirmation dialouge is very small compared to text used everywhere else on Zoho Sign.

      I've reported multiple times through Zoho's support email that the text on this notification is very small in contrast to all the other text on the Zoho Sign app. I think it's a bug and it just needs the font size to be increased. It's very minor but

    • Wise integration in Zoho Books

      Hi, it is now time for zoho books to support Wise.com integration for payment links. Wise has launched credit card payments, now about 0.5% cheaper than Stripe. Also their bank payments are much much cheaper than credit cards. Its time for books team

    • Error Message: None of the rows can be imported

      I have been using zoho sheets to download my CSV file for about 2 years now, this month, October 2021, for some reason when I download it to upload to zoho books I get a message saying "None of the rows can be imported". I have been using the same process,

    • Invalid Element place_of_contact, Invalid Element gst_no, Invalid Element gst_treatment

      so this is the body contact_name: orderData.customerName, company_name: orderData.customerName, email: orderData.email, contact_type: 'customer', currency_code: 'INR', gst_treatment: 'business_gst', gst_no: 'i using proper gst no i just removed it from

    • Next Page