BLINQ Web Application Generator

Posted by Jonathan Allen on Oct 03, 2006

Sections

Development

Topics

.NET ,

Web Frameworks ,

Artifacts & Tools

Tags

Visual Basic.NET ,

BLINQ ,

Database ,

Data Binding ,

C#

The BLINQ demo allows developers to quickly develop CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete) style applications. With one command, an entire web site with insert, list, and detail pages is created.

Like most automatic web site generators, this tool creates a site suitable for basic administrative tasks. Though the functionality is limited, the site can be up in running in literally minutes

What makes it different from other CRUD tools is that each page it generates is in the form of declarative C# or VB code in ASPX pages. These pages can then be easily modified or replaced on an as needed basis. Instead of being locked in, developers are merely given a convenient starting point.

Web sites created with BLINQ are more suited to prototypes and back-office users than end-user facing websites. With heavy customization it can be turned into a fully featured site, but it is more likely that developers will grab convenient pages and drop them into existing sites as needed.

BLINQ heavily leverages the LINQ project currently being considered for Visual Studio 2007. This means that BLINQ cannot be used in production code any time soon. On the plus side, there is still plenty of time to comment on the project and request feature changes.

For a walk through of BLINQ, see Patrick Spieler's post.

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