[thelist] Form/DB Interface Generators?

[niklaus.haldimann at xmedia.ch]

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hi list

lately i find myself coding a lot of smallish applications that provide
form-based web interfaces to a database (sometimes referred to as
"administration interfaces"). does anyone know of a tool that can assist
building such db interfaces? i'm thinking of something that would allow me
to associate certain table columns with a form element, and it would
automagically build an application with forms and sql statement to
list/insert/modify/delete records.

i am not looking for:

... a cms. i work with cms products all the time, but most real-world
projects cannot be implemented completely with any given cms' inherent
functionality. most of the time i find myself designing some supplemental db
tables for which an administration interface is needed. well, if there *is*
a cms that can do what i want, i'm happy to hear about it. ;)

... myPhpAdmin or the like. these tools provide a too direct interface to
the db. the tool i'm looking for should stick a more usable and intuitive
layer on the db, so non-techies can use the interface easily. also the tool
should be able to handle foreign keys (ie displaying available records for a
foreign key column in a select box). it should ideally be able to do things
like checking for non-null columns, date formats etc.

does this make any sense? at this stage i'm pretty platform and price
agnostic. i'm just wondering if there's anything like this out there.

cheers

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Nik Haldimann
Web Developer, Xmedia
http://www.xmedia.ch