The blog of Tobin

Tobins nerd blog on .NET, Software, Tech and Nice Shiny Gadgets.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

.NET Code Generators


I'm currently in the market for a n-Tier code generator, to help me to RAD some business applications. It would appear that things are moving along nicely in the .NET world. However, there are just *soooo* many to chose from! Codegeneration.net seems to keep a fairly exhaustive list, as does SharpToolBox.


My main problem is in evaluation and selection process. I reckon I could download and test about 10 different tools, taking 4 hours for each to get a feel for them, and there goes my week 8-) Lol, and my Start Menu would gain another 3 inches in breadth too 8-)

If anyone wants to send me any success/failure stories for .NET code generators then please do, I'd be extremely appreciative. I'll gladly put your thoughts up here too for the world to share!


Ideally I'd like to wittle this list down to as few options as possible:



  • ArcStyler
  • CompileX
  • Constructor()
  • DeKlarit
  • Iron Speed Designer
  • IronWorks
  • LLBLGen
  • nTierGen.NET
  • OlyMars
  • QuickAdmin
  • RapTier
  • Tangible Architect
  • Visible Developer
  • XCoder
  • TierDeveloper


Of course my choise is driven by a few factors, these are:



  • Must be C# .NET Generator
  • Must generate ASPX AND Winforms Apps
  • Must have some reverse engineering from DB options
  • Apps must visually look decent out of the box - no grotty generated UIs.
  • Must allow me to customise certain forms, without killing my changes on the next gen.
  • Must be supported, either by active community forums and/or vendor.
  • Be nice if it works with many database engines (Postgres, SQL Server, Access, Oracle etc)




I'm wondering what the world thinks are the best RAD/Generation tools for .NET business applications?


A brief browse has got me some interesting and invredibly encouraging opinions on both DeKlarit and LLBLGen . That's a good blog!


From what I've found so far, the world *is* raving about both of these products, especially DeKlarit! I'm going to download the demo and have a play...

P.S - If you're working for TierDeveloper you'll be glad to see I've added you to my list. However, your marketing bods are just a little aggressive for my liking, they just don't give up pestering me. Anyway, it worked, and your product is now mentioned here. Well done.

posted by Tobin Harris @ Tuesday, September 14, 2004 

1 Comments:

Blogger Tobin Harris said...

Hi Andy,

I did a follow up to this posting titled ".NET Code Generators 2". See here: http://www.tobinharris.com/blog/2004/12/net-code-generators-2.html.

I'd be interested to hear your viewpoints on the things you try.

Slightly off topic - I've recently worked with Rails for the Ruby language. This has been a fantastic experience so far (although I don't think it's suited to all projects). Rails uses ActiveRecord, which I think might be similar to LLBLGen's data access approach. Also, it handles interface generation like Iron Speed, but is also fully customisable/overridable.

When I re-evaluate the .NET world of RAD, I think I'll be looking for something similar to Rails. I have a skeaky feeling that Deklarit may be the best choice here, but we'll see!... Note that I couldn't find an instant easy way of using Deklarit or Rails for many some legacy projects that have composite keys, candidate keys and composite foreign keys in the database.

Tobin

7:15 PM  

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