[eluser]Jay Callicott[/eluser]
I have seen database introspection cleverly used to create scaffolding in frameworks like code igniter and ruby on rails. Always they are intended to get you up and flying while you flesh out your application.
How far has this gone? I know that it you can pretty easily determine what type of field and to some extent what validation to use based on type, such as validating numbers only for an int field, showing a textbox for a medium text field.
How do you see all of the options if the field is an enum? I haven't tried that yet. That would make populating a dropdown pretty easy. I haven't tried foreign keys, are those support in mysql 5? I think they are. That would help with establishing relationships.
My thought is wouldn't it be cool for small apps to have a one-size fits all solution where you could design a database and use a generic solution that would show reports and forms all based on database introspection. It would even create the navigation for you and you would have maybe a configuration table for the design/layout.
For reports you would create views (mysql 5) and it would look for all views (show all views or whatever the command is) and have datatable + pagination and search for each view.
You could plug it into a generic user authentication system or have something simplified.
The goal being basically ok you have a small budget client who may eventually need a full blown web app but right now they just need something simpler and the competition is maybe a Micrososft access database/application. That obv has issues when deployed to the web whereas this other solution would have simple forms, reports and whatnot and be web ready.
Development time wouldn't be that much and they'd have a mysql database there that could be the base for further application development later.
Maybe there's something like that already, not sure. But that would truly be database driven.
Jay
