Software development industry analysis by Larry O'Brien, the former editor of Software Development and Computer Language
Thursday, May 03, 2007

Is there a product in the "cheaply deployable" range (say ~$100) that you can point at a significant SQL Server database and it parses the foreign key relationships and presents a table viewer in which the values in the foreign-key column automatically hyperlink to the relevant table? And this tool allows basic CRUD editing, searching, and sorting? Just like Access, but with navigation?

(Or do I have to create a Rails app for a db that has several hundred tables? Given that Rails doesn't automatically generate the FK relationships, you're talking about days of work.)

Update: I'm not talking about a tool for me, necessarily -- have SQL, can travel and all that. And, sure, with Rails I can probably turn out a dozen or so forms (maybe more) in an 8-hour day. But, with a database with ~200 tables, you're talking about me charging my clients thousands of bucks just to make simple Web pages. My requirement is ad hoc navigation through a database, with CRUD at the table level and a "development time" of no greater-than-a-day for a 200-table database. Really, very close to Access, but when there's an FK in the table the person doesn't have to say "Oh, okay, this line item has InvoiceID 256 -- open the Invoices table, search for 256 -- Oh, okay, that has a CustomerID of 538 -- open the Customers table -- let's see, OrganizationID 23 ... "  Just:

 

LineItemID InvoiceID LineItemColumn LineItemColumn2
1 256 foo bar

...where that link leads to...

InvoiceID CustomerID InvoiceColumn InvoiceColumn2
256 538 foo bar

... etc ...

Update: I solved the problem using Rails

Thursday, May 03, 2007 7:13:04 AM (Hawaiian Standard Time, UTC-10:00) |  Disqus link  | SD Tools#
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