Iron Speed Designer 6.0 Has Been Improved

If you want something similar, but much more powerful, 100% free, and open source, and "real application developer oriented" try AribaWeb. It will surprise you.

It is of course not perfect (but IMO it almost is), its InstanApp MetaUI is still not capable of generating a functionally complete crud generator, but it comes pretty close.

I've been using this product for over 3 years and couldn't be happier with the time and money and effort it has saved myself and my organization. The company is extremely customer centric and listens to your input. The user community is one of the best I've had the opportunity to work with. The combination of the Company, the community, and the end product make this one a no brainer for anyone looking to save time and/or money in the development of Highly Professional .Net Applications.

I use Sql Server, Reporting Services, Telerik 3rd Party Controls and have never had even the slightest problem with the output of my Iron Speed generated application. Perhaps the best proof is to try it yourself as the company has a completely free version to get you started in learning the product.

I would highly recommend this product to anyone interested in focusing on the business rules of their specific application rather than on the complex and time consuming chores of generating a proper framework for all of your applications to run within.

Jeremy

Iron Speed is the best way I know to speed ASP.NET development projects along. I have been using it for 4 years and each year, it makes me more money by dramatically reducing development time. I even used Iron Speed Designer to build a mass-marketed content management code generator ( www.logicaldevelopers.com/logicalcms ). Iron Speed is a code generator that is sophisticated enough to be used to make another code generator.

If you are not a proficient ASP.NET developer, you will be surprised at what you can do with it. If you ARE proficient at ASP.NET, you will be nothing short of astounded at what a powerful developer it will make you.

Paul.

IronSpeed is the probabably best way I know to learn ASP.NET development projects. I have been using it for over 4 years and each year, it and I learn a lot everyday..And the best is that you have an application which works from start. You can build small application in minutes !! / staffanw

Please be aware that Jeremy, Paul, and Staffan are all "MVPs" with IronSpeed (see www.ironspeed.com/mvp/MVPs.aspx), so their "glowing reviews" should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

Yes I am an Iron Speed MVP. That does not negate anything that I have said or shown. Iron Speed does not pay MVPs. We achieve our status by showing off the great things that we are able to accomplish with this product. That you were not able to leverage your use of this product in the successful, profitable and cost-saving manner that we were does not take an ounce away from the fact that it worked for us and continues to do so.

And, is it a functionally complete crud generator?

Paul,

Although you might not receive income directly from IronSpeed, you most likely do derive income by providing consulting services to users of the product. I thought it only fair to disclose your relationship with the company so that your recommendation would be read in the proper context, that of someone with a vested financial interest in the product.

I'm glad the product works for you, and if you'd like to enlighten me as to solutions to the problems I mentioned in my first post, I'm all ears.

That being said, I'm guessing that my issues just weren't a real concern for your projects, as evidenced by the fact that your link helped prove my point about valid markup.

Curtis

Curtis,

If mark up validation is the only thing that matters, probably you know why these huge websites are having 100s of mark up errors?

validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.inf...

validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eba...

validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.asp...

validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mic...

--
Jimi Jegonia
Iron Speed MVP Developer
www.jimitron.net
www.jimitron.com

Developers have different agendas, product focus and career directions.

Looking for the right tool is never an accident; it always involves open participation and sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; It represents the wise choice among many alternatives.

Iron Speed Designer is my choice:

-It saves me more than 80% development time
-It gives me plenty of time to learn other means of productivity
-It gives me no limit to deliver whatever applications demand
As long as I give my best the all-abounding goodness naturally comes.

Every new version that Iron Speed Designer bring comes with a new technology improvement that can help us developers persistently enhance our skills.

The reason why many developers like us are happy with Iron Speed is because we found a lot of brilliant capabilities that no similar product can offer and these efficacies, I believe can only be experienced or fully expressed by developers who knows the product by heart.

Cheers

I have no problem revealing that I too am an Iron Speed MVP. I have been successfully building and delivering great web database applications for over five years, because of Iron Speed. Lets examine your issues one by one:

1) You should be dealing with one to one and one to many issues in the database anyway, instead of burying it with yet more code.
2) Iron Speed supports FireFox as well as IE. It works well with other browsers. How much time do you need to spend supporting every other browser out there?
3) It does enable ViewState for every control, you can turn that off if you want.
4) Every new version Iron Speed releases supports more uses of CSS. In the mean time when I can save 80% of my time on a project, I am ok with tables.
5) The applications run just fine, out of the box with a normalized database. Nuf said.
6) Anything you can do in VS can be used in Iron Speed. So run out there and get a tool that generates web services and incorporate it into Iron Speed.
7) Version 6 is fast. You should try it, a major improvement over previous versions, which were aleady great products. Maybe you need a new box. Pentiums are old technology now.
8) Support is available from Iron Speed directly with paid support, from the forums for free, manned on a volunteer basis by all of the MVP's, or (gasp) you could hire an MVP and solve your problem quickly. Surely the hundred or so clients I have trained, mentored or worked with over the past five years can't be wrong, can they?

And in conclusion, unless you want to hire someone to spend all their time and your money "crafting" the data/business/UI layers, get with the program and invest in something that works. Iron Speed is the only tool out there that generates all three layers, with a great looking UI Layer.

Iron Speed is EXACTLY the tool that you want for application development. I know of clients in every industry using this tool to great success.

Miles Gibson
Iron Speed MVP

Dear All,
I went through the different viewpoints and I think that there are valid points everywhere.. However, let's be objective and not be blindly biased with or against.. let me also initially declare that am an MVP too, I have been using ISD since 2005 and have developed tens if not hundreds of business applications using this tool.. and all in all it is worth doing.. I believe I'm a profissional who respects his choices, and just like all other MVPs I'm not part of IronSpeed payroll bill.

Being realistic, I know this is earth where everything has another side, pros and cons, ISD has improved tremendously a lot over the last 4 years. By definition issues and bugs are part of any software (have you heard of the most popular OS MS Windows!), as long as it is being developed continuously and is supported, those issues are part of life and don't form a worth to mention exception.

If the product is sometimes perceived as expensive, I wouldn't say it is cheap, but that is to cover the massive RnD behind the far improvements that the product has witnessed. Besides, it is still way cheaper than the other development environments from Sun or Microsoft.

Re the compatibility with browsers, speaking from my experience it is fully compatible with IE and firefox which is more than 85% of the global browser market share! what else you want!

The bottom line is that ISD is a great tool that carries out the routine tasks and leaves your team to focus on their differentiation.. which is what makes some systems better than others... all systems do the same basic routine stuff, but the fine touches and the well-thought of customizations are what makes the deference.. IronSpeed Designer lets you to focus on those..
just my 2%

Just one last word, IronSpeed gives anybody the chance to evaluate the product for 2 weeks FREE of any charges or future commitments.. those who are new, just give it a try an judge yourself, I believe it is a hard to live without...

Mohannad Amr
MBA-UK, PMP, MCSD, MCP, MSF, IronSpeed MVP
www.HedgehogSol.com

And since not single one of this "MVPs" cared enought to answer the question: "functionally complete crud generator?", I guess I'll guess I have to conclude that Curtis Schiewek is rigth, this MVPs are quick to say "Iron Speed is great" but have no interest on backing up those claims with an actual technical description if its features.

I guess it should be another functionally incomplete generator that only works for simple database/object models and fails for the real world complex models.

I'm afraid I can't let Francisco's comments go unchallenged. I'm also an Ironspeed MVP but I hope that doesn't automatically diminish the validity of my input.

To suggest that none of the MVPs who have commented previously have any interest in providing a full technical description of its features is missing the point. If you have specific queries there is a wealth of material on the Iron Speed website which you can read at your leisure.

I also believe that you are missing the point on the CRUD generator question. No product is ever a perfect solution for every possible requirement, be it IT related or otherwise. None of the MVPs are suggesting that Iron Speed Designer is always the right choice of development product for every project.

What Iron Speed Designer does well, it does extremely well. It has enabled me to develop applications of varying size and scope quickly, reliably and, most importantly, profitably. It has saved me months of effort in both development and testing.

It's the most comprehensive code generator I've ever used.

Finally, someone that at least cared to answer. I think it is important to say you are Ironspeed MVP before someone else says it, you guys should have done that, to protect your credibility.

Now, you are supossed to be the experts (MVPs) on Ironspeed, and you do not even know if the product for which you are experts is able to fullfill the 5 simple requirements that would make it a functionally complete crud generator? Of course I do not expect you to fulfill all of them at the 100%, but maybe if you tell me you can deal with over the 90% of the requirements (like AribaWeb) I (and others) could consider you for a future project

While it is nice that you can say that "Iron speeed has enabled [you] to develop applications of varying size and scope quickly, reliably and, most importantly, profitably" that just a subjective statement, if you really want to promote this product, you should start by discussing how you generator performs when meassured by objective criteria, like the one offered in here. Without that, this is just an exercise on futility.

Show me objective comparisons with crud applications generators like AribaWeb, AppFuse, SeamGen, or Rails.

Or show me objective comparisions of you templating language with Microsoft T4, CodeSmith, FreeMarker, etc.

Without that, is just your opinion against that of anyone else, and that does not help on making an objective good choice.

Ok, so what are the "5 simple requirements that would make it a functionally complete crud generator" ?? And who decided
that these five simple rules were the determinant anyway? A complete CRUD code generator will generate all THREE layers, a
and not just one or two, like most of the others. This is a .NET product, and does not, and likely will not compete in
the Java/Open Source environment. If there are better tools out there, regardless of the platform, I haven't seen it.

There is no product out there that does it all, not Microsoft, not Borland, not CodeSmith, not Sun. Nor will that ever happend,
vendors focus on doing one thing VERY WELL, not everything half-baked. FWIW, thats my 2 cents worth.

Oh, and I did state that I am an Iron Speed MVP in my first response.

Francisco,

Like a desperate debater, you continually redefine the argument. This is a tactic that is often seen when the opposing case is losing its legs. You present me with a Wiki from whatever that defines a "functional CRUD" even though the very basis of our disagreement never included the contention about nebulous musings on some site about their definition about something of which I nor anyone else ever made a claim of.

There is no question in my mind that you have some kind of axe to grind that extends well beyond that of a disgruntled customer. The vehemence of your position and inability to consider an alternative possibility confirms this, at least for me.

And the consequential clarity of the futility of this discussion has tired me to a point that I will bow out.

I will leave it to others of greater patience and kinder dispositions to refute your clearly orchestrated campaign.

Yours,

Paul.

I have no problem revealing that I too am an Iron Speed MVP. I have been successfully building and delivering great web database applications for over five years, because of Iron Speed. Lets examine your issues one by one:

1) You should be dealing with one to one and one to many issues in the database anyway, instead of burying it with yet more code.

2) Iron Speed supports FireFox as well as IE. It works well with other browsers. How much time do you need to spend supporting every other browser out there?

3) It does enable ViewState for every control, you can turn that off if you want.

4) Every new version Iron Speed releases supports more uses of CSS. In the mean time when I can save 80% of my time on a project, I am ok with tables.

5) The applications run just fine, out of the box with a normalized database. Nuf said.

6) Anything you can do in VS can be used in Iron Speed. So run out there and get a tool that generates web services and incorporate it into Iron Speed.

Ironspeed 6 is really fast. You should try it, a major improvement over previous versions, which were aleady great products. Maybe you need a new box. Pentiums are old technology now.

8) Support is available from Iron Speed directly with paid support, from the forums for free, manned on a volunteer basis by all of the MVP's, or (gasp) you could hire an MVP and solve your problem quickly.

Surely the hundred or so clients I have trained, mentored or worked with over the past five years can't be wrong, can they?

And in conclusion, unless you want to hire someone to spend all their time and your money "crafting" the data/business/UI layers, get with the program and invest in something that works.

Iron Speed is the only tool out there that generates all three layers,

with a great looking UI Layer.

Iron Speed is EXACTLY the tool that you want for application development. I know of clients in every industry using this tool to great success.

I have provided a link to those 5 rules since my first post... did you even bothered to read it?

The only ones that seem desperate here are the IronSpeed MVPs, as you seem unable to provide objective evidence of any advantage on using IronSpeed, I am not refining anything, I am just repeating the same question over and over, to see if any of you bother to discuss the technical advantages or disadvantages of IronSpeed from an objective perspective, but you seem more interested in fighting over subjective opinons than trying to evaluate generators from a objective POV.

Also, please bother to read the name of the people posting here, the disgruntled customer is Curtis Schiewek, not me, I have said I ever used your product, I am only interested in comparing it against an objective list of rules to find a good way to compare code generators.

Did you ever stop to think, for a moment anyway, that the problem lies between the chair and the keyboard? Iron Speed handles pair tables ( many-to-many) relationships beautifully. It generates a FULL CRUD out of the box every time for me. But I can only guess at your experience ( or lack thereof) at real-world data modeling techniques...

If you have found better products than Iron Speed for generating all three layers, then show it to me! I looked for years and didn't find one alternative that came close, and to this day still haven't seen anything that comes close, not in terms of great looking interfaces, or in terms of beautiful architecture.

I have sucessfully built many applications with 30-90 entities, many pair tables, forks, one-to-one, self-joins and on and on... Apparently I know something you don't.

Have a great day.

Curiously enough, as an Iron Speed MVP, I am too busy accepting new contracts from clients to be desperate. If Iron Speed was all that bad, then no one would be using it.

Instead, I have clients from all over the world calling me to work with them on Iron Speed projects. Recession, what recession? Folks are calling us, because Iron Speed works!!! They want applications built quickly, that look good, and deliver as promised. They do not particularly care about "rules" for correct CRUD generation, they just want stuff that works...

Curtis may or may not be a disgruntled customer, however I am sorry to hear that he had a bad experience with the product. Perhaps he should contact an MVP, to get the real story on how to build great applications quickly...

As for your situation, I am not sure what your circumstances are that require different database formats, but remember that Iron Speed supports mySQL, Oracle and Access, as well as SQL Server. And you can "flip" your application between database formats quickly in most circumstances. For example, if you wanted to deliver your product in different configurations, you could do that with Iron Speed.

If you find a product that you think is better than Iron Speed, I would be interested in a subjective comparison of features, rather than the broad representation of your five rules. It seems like you want your cake and eat it too.

Cheers,

Did you ever stop to think, for a moment anyway, that the problem lies between the chair and the keyboard?

Using a tool like Iron Speed is a shift from traditional thinking,
no question. However, once you have made that shift, then I think you
will find that the advantages really outweigh the disadvantages. In my humble opinion,
the architecture of an Iron Speed application, especially at the code/class level is really beautiful.
I can retrieve a dataset of records in 2-3 lines of code... No more mind-numbing repetitous coding
of the data/business layers and so on. All three layers work together...

If you are still interested in taking another crack at Iron Speed, I would be willng to spend some time
with you ( no charge ) to answer your questions, one on one.

Cheers,

I completely agree with Miles. I have come across lots of debates like this before. I was keeping quiet until recently till my agreement with my previous company has ended.

I am no MVP but I have used Ironspeed and used it to heart's content since version 3. I am the architect in my company and I love working with ISD. What we require from any code generator to generate nice systematic and clear code which are easy to modify and understand. Ironspeed does that and does it to a great accuracy.

I feel its better to have a ready made UI instantly than to design one from scratch. I also love the consistency between pages and layout. More over if you don't like the UI design yourself as a template. We have done it couple of times too.

The best part is it runs from the beginning. In most applications hell lot of time is wasted by modifying and re modifying cilents change requests. Why not have a instant UI generator which will create an app for your trial run in days not in weeks/months, and you are at the liberty to use the rest of the time in making alterations/ modifications?

It generates all three layers and quite easy to implement and alter. No one should expect any code gen to do everything for them. After all developers are required to modify, irrespective of how great the product is.
I don't deny that there are issues/ bugs with ISD, but it has become quite stable post v4.2 releases. And BTW which application dosen't have bugs?

In my company some programmers don't like ISD. My observation to that is; people who think they know more than the technology itself shall fall into the category of aforesaid guys.

After all we want stuff to work and ISD dose 80% of the job. Rest depends on your programmers ans architects. It saves us money and time. No code gen I have seen dose it to that level. And I don't give damn about compliances to any rule as long as my application works and clients are happy.

So all the ISD guys
Cheers

I'm just a hobbyist. My career involves writing embedded software. The Free Download is good
for developing a nice looking Web App based upon 8-12 tables. Making customizations to the
generated code is a good way to move into object oriented software (from the straight C code
that I am used to). By writing my own customizations I have been able to mimic some of the
features that come with the paid version and some features that Ironspeed does not advertise -like
making a very rich Order Entry that is based largely upon a sophisticated view.

I am considering Iron Speed for our Company to solve those "quick and dirty" CRUD web
apps we are constantly wrting. One thing I have read in this discussion is that
IS can't handle Many-To-Many relationships. I can't remember the last time I designed
a database that didn't have a Many-To-Many relationship (using a mapping or cross-
reference table). Am I in the minority here? I thought many-to-many relationships
was Hierarchial Database Sesign 101. (In order to eliminate duplicate data....)

Anyway, I would like someone (one of the MVPs?) to elaborate on how they handle Many-
To-Many relationships using IS, or how/why they chose not to design Many-To-Many
relationships. (Of course, I could build Store Procedures to "hide" the Many-To-Many,
but that seems "wrong" for some reason.)

Thanks for any input!