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ASPRunner

Originally published by "dbarker" on 2004-11-09 18:12:00Z

Create ASP code for your database with ASPRunner: This is pretty good software. I downloaded the demo, walked through the wizard, and within 3 minutes (from download to finished interface) I had a complete set of pages to view, edit, add, print, search, and export a database table on my SQL Server.

Of course, I’m too anal retentive about my stuff to actually use it, but this makes me want to get therapy so I could loosen up a bit.

ASPRunner Professional creates a set of ASP pages to access and modify Oracle, SQL Server, MS Access , DB2, MySQL, or FileMaker databases, or any other ODBC datasource. Using generated ASP pages, users can search, sort, edit, delete and add data into a database.

The wizard gives you tons of configuration options about how you want to interface to appear, and I think you could build it so no one would even know it was generated.

At $249, it’s little spendy, but how many hours of programming will it save, and how much are those hours worth? (Better yet, how many hours can you bill the client for?)

This would be great for prototyping. I hate building admin interfaces, especially when requirements are still up in the air (like they always are). On this note, see my review of the phpMyAdmn book for ways you can get that interface to do the same thing.

Does anyone know of a PHP version of a tool like this? (Update: Since this entry was written, PHPRunner has been released for PHP/MySQL platforms.)

Finally, I’ve been seeing a lot of hype about automatic code generation in general. There’s an entire book on it, in fact. I’ve been meaning to read it.

Comment by "Brian" on 2004-11-09 18:37:00Z
That program looks very similar to a program available from [http://www.stpworks.com](http://www.stpworks.com) It is "FREE" for personal use and $59 per site for other use. I have used it with great success on a couple of sites.
Comment by "Matt" on 2004-11-09 08:23:00Z
BasaOne is a similar program that DOES use PHP, though the program itself is for MacOS X. [http://www.basasoft.com/basaone.php](http://www.basasoft.com/basaone.php)
Comment by "Alejandro" on 2004-11-09 12:07:00Z
There is a tool for PHP that does that and much more. It is called PHPmaker. They also have programs for ASP (ASPMaker) ASP.net (ASPNETMaker), JSPMaker, CFMMaker ansd even XMLMaker They also have a "suite" with all of the above included. The prices are pretty resonable too. [http://www.hkvstore.com/](http://www.hkvstore.com/)
Comment by "Mean Dean" on 2004-11-10 10:15:00Z
Alejandro beat me to the punch. For 1/2 the price of ASPRunner, I purchased the 'bundle' from ASP Maker which included ASP .Net maker, XML Maker and PHP Maker. The biggest problem I have with the product is that you have to slug it out with the templates before you can get it to create XHTML compliant code. Having done that though, it works pretty well.
Comment by "Tim" on 2004-11-15 14:30:00Z
Tried this software and it works well with PHP. It is somewhat basic but for beginners its is worth the price. (Note : When installing odbc's for mysql I was unable to get them to load on any of my xp machines. So I used an old ME machine. This is a mysql problem with some notes on their site. Hopefully I'll figure out how to load it on XP.)
Comment by "DaveF" on 2004-11-29 14:50:00Z
1. I have been using the CodeCharge ([http://www.codecharge.com](http://www.codecharge.com)) Code Generator/IDE for some time. I've found it to be a very poweful tool for producing ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, Perl, or Java Web Applications. Pricing starts around $139 USD for the "personal edition", while the full product goes for around $500 USD. A good Code Generation information resource is the website "Code Generation Network" ([http://www.codegeneration.net](http://www.codegeneration.net))
Comment by "Tom Ince" on 2008-11-05 17:05:00Z
This product is terrible. It's not even good for prototyping. The updates are few and far between. Bugs remain broken, promised features remain unimplemented. Once you customize any of the pages, the program will fail to make updates to those pages ever again, you have to reset them and redo all your changes. The Wizard interface is very restrictive and not friendly to navigation. The built-in code editors are bad (you can't do a find in the code on the Events tab (let alone a find all in all Event code). This product should cost $20 at most, and be used only by non-WebDevelopers that need a quick and dirty application. If you're a web-developer, there are many other better and cheaper solutions out there. Terrible product, look elsewhere for database web solutions.