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Anyone know of any good ASP.NET Forms Designer software or components out there (free or not) that works with the visual studio IDE? Something that makes the task of creating web entry forms for database tables easier and faster? "Loosley coupled" rather than "tightly coupled" to the database structure? One that allows for easy inclusion of subforms/subtables? Am I asking too much? Doing this by hand is rather tedious. Any comments or dialog would be appreciated...
Erm... you mean like the Expression Studio applications? It's just a matter of creating the markup and adding the codebehind afterwards. Some use Expression, some use Dreamweaver.
Sorry for the late response, but I'll try to resurrect this question. I wasn't talking about Expression Studio. Lets get a little more basic...
Lets say I have a database. The database contains 10+ tables. I want to make a database form in an Asp.NET webpage for each of those 10+ tables. I want all forms to have the same look and feel across all 10. In simplest manner, I just want to pick the fields I wish to display on the form (wizard?), and have it automatically create textboxes, labels, etc based on what is on the database, and then let me position them as necessary (as well as changing the type for lists, etc). Very similar to what you see in Access, except for Visual Studio. If I make changes to the database structure of those tables, I want it to have the ability to update, and add/remove the fields according to the new structure (which might be asking waaaaay too much).
Know how easy it is to make a form in Access by picking fields through the wizard? Know how easy it is to then add a subform to it with a related table inside of that form in Access? Is there something similar for ASP.NET out there that you have seen and/or used and could recommend (pretend money is not a problem)?
I already code all of this by hand in ASP.NET, there are no problems there and that is not the question. I can make master/detail forms. It's just a pain in the A** to do it by hand for each master/detail table, etc. I'm simply wanting something that might make things a little less tedious.
Hey,
I know if you have a Data Source in Server Explorer, you can drag and drop that onto the design surface and it will create a GridView for you, but I couldn't see an option to have it to this for textboxes and labels. You can definitely do this in Windows Forms, so there might be a way to do it for ASP.Net, but I only had a quick look.
Gary
I am just reviewing a product "Iron speed Designer" that seems to do what you want. Take a look and see if this works
You could possibly drop a sqlDataSource on the page and a formView control setting the dataSource to the sqldatasource. it will page/update etc like if you just select * records it automatically displays all fields 1 record at a time. I have only played with it but you may be able to set some css style / theme and bingo.... maybe.
I've also played with codesmith a code generation tool http://www.codesmithtools.com/freeware.aspx thats the free version. You can connect to your db and configer it output what you need. there are also heaps of templates. I have not used it for a while.
Hey gigemboy,
Did you ever get a handle on exactly what you wanted to do here?
If so, what was it?
Gary
I have just read about SpeedBase. If you have reviewed Iron speed designer which do you consider an easier application for web development. and do you know the cost of SpeedBase