What RAD tools are out there?

Question

We all know the drill: You have a (small) model, you need to persist it, you need a UI for it (web, desktop, mobile, some of the former, all of them).

This is such a repetitive process that I can't help but wonder why we are still stuck with POJOs, OR mappers, and coding UIs from hand (since most UI "designers" don't even know about inheritance and you need to build every OK/cancel dialog with more than one field from scratch). RAD tools/platforms promise to fix that but I haven't seen anything real, yet. The idea of this wiki is to collect all the tools which allow you to flesh out an idea in a few minutes and build from there. Simple things (like creating a simple UI for your model or saving it in a database) should be simple. Attaching a fairly complex object to a dialog to edit it should take one line of code or less ;)

So here comes the challenge: What RAD tools are out there which allow to build a small app within, say, 8 hours. To give you an idea what it should be able to do, here is the spec:

• You have "knowledge" nodes. Each such node has name and a long description attached to it (single line and multi line string)

• Each knowledge node can have any number of knowledge nodes as children (1:* sorted parent/child relation). Child nodes need to maintain order (i.e. use a list, not a set)

• Each knowledge node can have any number of tags attached to it (1:* unordered relation between different types)

• Any two knowledge nodes can be connected with any number of relations (n:m relation)

• It should be possible to load/save the model from/as XML and from/in a database with little effort

• Users expect undo/redo today

The UI should offer the standard operations: Create, reorder and delete knowledge nodes. Reordering should use drag'n'drop. It should allow to add/remove tags from the knowledge nodes. There should be a simple way to connect two knowledge nodes by a relation (say by dragging one node on the other in a special mode).

The UI should also allow to search for nodes with certains tags or relations. For bonus points, it should offer a simple way to navigate the relation graph.

Anything up the challenge? As usual, OSS preferred.

Background: I'm developing software for more than 25 years, now. Still, this simple application takes several weeks if not months to code in any language which I've encountered so far: Groovy, Java, Python, Tcl/Tk, Grails, OpenOffice, MS Access, TreeLine, [TurboGears][10], [Enthought Traits][11], .net.

Some feedback on the contenders. Note that I try to highlight the main point in a single sentence, so take the next section with a grain of salt, OK?

Groovy Nice language, compact code. Close but lacking in the UI department. They are working on it but just not there. For persistence, only Java serialization out of the box.

Java Java was great when it came out ten years ago but it hasn't evolved that much. It's an aging language with a vast set of libraries but you just need too much code to get things done and each line of code takes time to write.

Python Got almost all what it needs but for some reason, it never really became as mainstream as, say, Java. Got a nice UI set with PyQt4, a cool OR mapper with SQLAlchemy but still, we don't see it kicking the throttle to full speed an pull ahead. Only with the advent of unit testing, it became feasible to write bigger projects. Too low level for the task.

Tcl/Tk Nice widget set but the language sucks when the code size grows past a certain point. Shows its age by now.

OpenOffice Since 2.0, OO comes with a built in database and an "Access-like" tool. It's in its infancy but they'll get there ... eventually. Couldn't handle parent/child relations because the UI doesn't allow to specify them (see bug). Fixed in 3.1. With 3.1, you can create the model but the UI would still take a lot of time writing.

MS Access Almost anything we'd need but the UI options are pretty limited. Frustrating.

TreeLine No way to implement relations and too restricted for most other use cases (you simply can't do much else with it)

.net I have no experience with this one, mainly because it's Windows only. I think that this one could be pretty close but let's face it: What is the point of locking out a quarter of mankind?

Solution 1

Delphi RAD Studio and Lazarus IDE for pascal/delphi language.

Solution 2

WAVEMAKER is the best rad tool ever built.What you said can be done in a couple of hours.

Solution 3

Microsoft Lightswitch. It is hard to imagine anything "more rapid".

Solution 4

It depends on who your market is. I can tell you one thing, your market will never consist of the whole of mankind. So that fact that maybe 25% of the people on the planet don't use Windows shouldn't really matter to you.

What matters to you is how many people in your market use whatever OS? If you're writing a business/financial application and you only develop for Windows, then you're probably only leaving out about .05% of your market (because when is the last time you heard of an Accountant that uses Macs or Linux?).

However, if you're writing a program for producing music (like FruityLoops) and you write Windows only then you're probably leaving out more like 50% of your market.

Solution 5

Clarion (http://softvelocity.com).

I could/can get a demo banged together for a project like this in a matter of hours.

One perspective deficiency is that it creates Win32 executables. Of course, this can be solved by creating a web system with it.

Another is that Clarion is definitely not open source. Which would put a lot of folk off.

---

Okay. My last comment was about 2 hours ago. So in that time, here's what I managed to get done in Clarion.

http://125.214.67.190:5824/

I'm not writing this to brag. I honestly believe Clarion can do amazing things in a very short period of time.

The "Knowledge" system is very much a demo. You can only add Tags and Relations to the parent Nodes. There isn't a proper Tag/Relation search (only singular). No images or decent graphic design or UI.

But the framework, the foundation is there.

View more solutions

Comments

[George Stocker]

Wow. Why did you post an answer 'in the question'? It sort of takes out the purpose of asking said question. Voting to close as 'not a real question'.

[George Stocker]

With regards to your '.NET' comment: You should have left it with 'having no experience'. You may be locking out a quarter of the known world, but over 91% of businesses run Windows on their desktops.

[Ryan Guill]

It really only works on the web, but you might also want to look at ColdFusion. Also, Flex/AIR can be a good RAD UI layer.

[Aaron Digulla]

Gortok: These are not valid answers, because they all fail in one major respect or the other. Well, maybe with the exception of TurboGears, Grails and ETraits.... :/

[Jas Panesar]

Ryan: if only one could vote up comments.

[Aaron Digulla]

Jas: We could if he would post that as an answer. hinthint*

[rizwan]

Too bad you are ignoring .NET. The RAD support in ASP.NET (plain ASP.NET, not MVC) or even the (now almost legacy) WinForms is superb.

[Aaron Digulla]

I agree with your thoughts, but that's a different story. If I don't have the tool, I can't deliver. So I'd like to keep the market question out here.

[Aaron Digulla]

Can you do a desktop only app with it? (i.e. no server needed)

[Aaron Digulla]

I agree that it's RAD - but can you write the app I spec out in under 8 hours, incl. database persistence?

[Aaron Digulla]

Is Delphi still Windows only? There once was a Linux version. Is that still available?

[Aaron Digulla]

In which language is the Lazarus IDE written? I ask because the site says "chose your own UI" and the IDE doesn't look like any UI which I recognize.

[mghie]

@Robert MacLean: Can you please post a link to an application created with Delphi Prism that looks and feels Mac-like? I doubt that those exist, but am really curious and happy to be proven wrong.

[Aaron Digulla]

Is SQL Server also free? If not, I have a RAD tool without a database ... :/ How well does it work with other DBs, like MySQL? Is it possible to create the app outlined above and sell the result without paying royalties to MS?

[dmajkic]

Lazarus is written in Free Pascal. You can find source URL on site. Free Pascal Compiler is native cross-platform compiler, supporting Linux, Mac, 64bits, Delphi syntax and so on.

[Cesar Romero]

@mghie Delphi Prism APP dn.codegear.com/article/images/39017/03000005.png Full article dn.codegear.com/article/39017

[Aaron Digulla]

@dmajkic: What library do they use for the UI? Delphi's? Is there an overview of the widget set? I couldn't find anything but the screenshots on the website.

[Aaron Digulla]

I tried to follow the online course (which you can download from their web site) but it requires MSSQL Server 2000 or later.

[Robert MacLean]

Part 1: Some editions of SQL Server are free (express and developer for instance). The SQL Server management tools are for SQL Server only, but the Visual Studio IDE could be extended to other DB's if wanted.

[Robert MacLean]

Part 2: It is possible to either create the application using the Visual Studio development tools or to extend the redistributable version of Visual studio to do what is described and sell it without paying royalties.

[Aaron Digulla]

Can you please delete this and add it to the Clarion entry instead? This way, we have one item per RAD tool :)

[Aaron Digulla]

And I wish more people would do this to show off their RAD tools. I mean they are meant to make this a snap, aren't they? :)

[Stu Andrews]

Aaron, heh heh Yup! They are meant to make this in a snap :)

[George Stocker]

@Aaron Digulla: If you don't have the tool, then your best bet is to get the tool. Visual Studio Express for .NET is free.

[Yogi Yang 007]

I agree with WinDev. It is very easy to build an app esp with DB. I hate its proprietary DB though. And it seems to support two way communication between its UML only if we use its proprietary DB.

[Yogi Yang 007]

It has personal edition which is free. Check it out.

[Stephan Eggermont]

-1 For RAD you want an object image like smalltalk.

[rizwan]

Wait. You have just used RAD and C++ in the same sentence? :)

[Aaron Digulla]

So how long did it take to implement the project outlined above?

[Gregor Brandt]

Delphi now does Windows 32 and 64 bit and OS X 32 bit

[Robin Green]

Some time ago this might have been considered a RAD tool. Not now.

[Ottavio Campana]

it' now called xero coder xerocoder.com/index.php?p=xerocoder

[Marco van de Voort]

Aaron Digulla: Lazarus uses an own framework called LCL over GTK2/QT/win32 (GDI)/Carbon as backend widgetset. There are also some lesser developed backends (like ownerdrawn which tries to be an own widgetset, mostly used in embedded projects). There is some effort to reuse native widgets as much as possible. (so they are really win32 widgets, not painted ones). The own classes library is modeled after Delphi principles

[rhody]

Visual studio is not RAD, try something like Delphi is you want to see RAD done properly.

[Sam Patirage]

Lightswitch has been discontinued. The new tool is powerapps . powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us