Robert Sanders
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| Posted: 11/05/2003, 12:19 AM |
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Hello Group,
I am evaluating CodeCharge for my company and was wondering if any of you are willing to share your opinion of the software. Our database is Oracle, and I am looking for a rapid development tool for a group of five people with strong database knowledge and varying degrees of web application development knowledge.
I’m looking for opinions from people who are using the product often. Especially if you have gone through this same process yourself.
Thanks for any help you are willing to provide.
Robert Sanders
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Ken Hardwick
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| Posted: 11/05/2003, 12:38 AM |
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Hi Robert,
I was in similar situation as your employees several years ago. I knew databases (oracle), vba, crystal reports, etc but nothing about web design.
Was one of the first to start using CodeCharge when it was introduced. And, actually am still using CodeCharge instead of CodeCharge Studio. I have designed
a number of intranet web applications with this product for my company and for
myself. Most of the one's for my company have been against oracle.
This has been a great product for designing database driven web applications.
Ken Hardwick
Norman,Ok
wwww.kenhardwick.com
ken@kenhardwick.com
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ryan
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| Posted: 11/05/2003, 3:35 AM |
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hello Robert :
This is not to create a forum debate or anything of course everyone is used to what they feel is comfortable with them.
I used CC before on my Project Management System, the thing is clients want more of the 'look and feel' other than the functionality. With CC you cannot visualize the exact WYSIWYG html template and the more you use it the more you will stick to "the point of no return" eventually you will have to abandon CC and do a lot of unmanaged customization.
With CC you get a grid record form not knowing how it looks like or it is simply difficult to nest HTML codes and retain the CC page (template)
With CCS you can virtually control everything, even the generated code. You can actually make your project look like a non-generated CCS project.
I do not know if that is fixed in CC, for example you have a humongous SQL statement, inner joining to multi tables. Naturally you will put this into a view or stored procedure. But because of the CC's generated page count you have to tweak the generated code "SELECT COUNT(*)" and debug the query for hours.
I do not know if it still fixed but Another CC weakness is for instance you edit the 134th record on 15th page, you click and go in the record form. You click Update and you will be taken to the 1st page. Normally you will think that you must be taken back to the 134th record on 15th page. You can do a resolution for this by coding the Request.Servariables("QUERY_STRING") but it is so tedious to code on 10 grids for instance. There are chances that the querystring parameters duplicate and records that are not to be displayed are displayed. CCS solved this already using GET (even removing the parameters you do not require)
There are CC articles that solve certain issues but they are tedious to implement and hard to debug (dynamic n-level list box) eventually these are customized codes that instigate CCS to be abandoned sooner.
I am not saying that try CC and go with CCS, or dump CC and start with CCS. But these are reasons that cite why CC is not stopped and still continuously marketet along with CCS. I even tried to force-export CC to CCS. Which did not do any good.
It's your choice Robert Sanders.
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Ken Hardwick
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| Posted: 11/05/2003, 9:05 AM |
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Would fully agree with Ryan.
CCS appears to be much more powerfull product.
I have my black-belt in CC from spending multiple hours designing web apps.
Looking forward to having time to learn/use CCS.
If I was just starting out, would definately start with CCS.
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feha
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| Posted: 11/05/2003, 11:25 AM |
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I suggest You start with CCS and You won't be disapointed...
Before I liked very much CC and had difficult time learning CCS.
But now I won't look back to CC ...
CCS is more powerfull and lot more features... (CC is good too).
regards
feha
[www.vision.to]
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Arles V.
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| Posted: 11/05/2003, 11:43 AM |
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I've been using CCS for over 4 months now and I am glad to say that I am quite impressed with the product. I've evaluated other code generators and actually made a mistake of purchasing one which we eventually threw away because the code generator was buggy, but the generated code was actually well written. One thing I really like about CCS is the support for Stored Procedures (I'm using SQL Server 2000), which have made my code run a whole lot faster. I also like the liberal use of Cascading Style Sheets for the generated code and the WYSIWYG editor.
CCS can still be improved especially in the area of technical support and better documentation especially when it comes to having a framework object model.
Last but not the least, one thing's for sure, you'd get your money back with the first project you generate.
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Dave Baker
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| Posted: 11/05/2003, 6:42 PM |
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I have been programming ever since 1995, when I picked up a Borland Turbo Pascal "kit" at Office Depot ... Code Charge Studio is the most fun I've ever had with a piece of software.
The amount of stuff you can do, in a short amount of time, is nothing short of incredible.
The documentation is not quite as strong as one would like, but perhaps the 2.2 version of the docs (if one is coming, to replace the 2.1) will be better.
This is the best $280 I've ever spent on anything software-related.
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nottheusual1
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| Posted: 11/05/2003, 10:52 PM |
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Started using CC a couple of years ago and still use it today to do quick interfaces for admin of databases (things the Web site visitor never see).
Stepped up to CCS about the time 2.x was first released and now rely upon it heavily for everything that touches the Web site visitor for a number of customers.
Overall, massive bang for the buck but requires learning how CCS thinks things should be done and brushing up on OO concepts for the PHP we use.
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Sjg
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| Posted: 11/14/2003, 11:21 AM |
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Do not even look at Code Charge. Look at Code Charge Studio (CCS).
The thing to remember is that Code Charge Studio is a Rapid Application Development Package. It is Modeled based in their designs with user exits. The user exits are the mechanism to tailor the package to your specific needs. It is very important that you understand the exits, when they occur, and what addressability you have to other objects. CCS calls the exits "events" which is in line with the current terminology.
This is definitely not new technology. Model based application design packages have been around for a long time. I have used several for mainframe applications.
The model structures are solid. By solid I mean that they will accomplish most, if not all, of your needs. The basic models that you will use are the Grid and Record objects. These allow you to quickly create web pages that can search, display search results (grids), and maintain (add/edit/delete) a record in a table. There are additional models as well such as the login, editable grid, and directory components. Also are wizards to increase the speed.
Any application user interface is basically covered by these functions, find the data, show the data, and update the data. CCS allows you to do edits and features without having to place the code in an event. These include items like require a field, mark a field as unique, and create table based list boxes for setting fields, along with additional features.
It is these features that are important as they are the common items that you would spend time to manually write code for. This is the RAD portion of the application.
The key to making CCS, and any Model Based Application Generator, very powerful is performing the unique features of your application (website). For example, we have a website that needs to send data as a Word Document. This is very easy to do with CCS. We simply created XML for the document, let CCS use the template. The key was putting the mime type in the HTML header and on the before show event setting the content to a MS Word Application (use the response. content method).
In fact we created the document in Word and substituted the database field names for the data we want replaced, for Example {LastName}. We then saved the Word document as an XML document. At this point we were 90% done. We then incorporated this into the CCS generated template (the .html file) and we were done. This took about 30 minutes. When the user navigates to the page, the browser opens up MS word where they can then save the data on their machine, print it, or do anything they want. The amount of Server-Side Code required to make this happen that we had to write was *** ONE *** line: the response.content. We were also able to control the format much better (for example we were able to set the margins). This is just an example of how CCS can be a powerful tool. The main thing is to understand the models, understand the events, and try to use the model as closely as possible.
An application can be quickly created and functional which will allow you to then spend time on the GUI portion (the HTML/Look and Feel) of the object.
I definitely like the package and would recommend for web application development. I find I can create 95-98% of the application with CCS. With the custom ASP pages I do have to write, I include the common components in most of them and these maintains continuity for items like the DB connection reuse of the already written functions etc.
Have Fun and Good Look…..
Sjg….
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