I like programming in Java. But I can't find any tools for rapidly developing simple database applications in java -- even if I'm willing to spend money doing it.

Maybe there are some out there -- has anybody seen any? I really just need something that'll help me with form validation, and creating/modifying/deleting rows from a database. I need more than just a one-shot code generator; I'll need to modify the web forms and reports quite often. I.e., code generators are okay -- but I must be able to specify all of my page markup and such in the input language to the code generator.

Foray into Microsoft

Given the need for a rapid web-application development environment, my boss and I have started looking at Microsoft ways of doing it. To be honest, the asp.net stuff seems to come pretty close to doing what we need.

I have three initial impressions about the world of MS-oriented software development:

• There are lots of fuzzy, feel-good, technical terms for establishing a relationship between two entities; e.g., linking and wiring. The late Edsgar Dijkstra, in his EWD 1044: To hell with "meaningful identifiers"!, discusses the danger of using such fuzzy terms to mean specific things. I buy his argument -- that it can be misleading to use such terms that appear to have an intuitive meaning. However, I don't completely buy his conclusion; carefully chosen identifiers can be helpful without implying too much.

• There seem to be lots of related ways to do the same thing. I.e., the explanations of precisely what they do seem to be vague. E.g., I'm accustomed to seeing a locale specification in the Unix/Java world; but in asp.net, there's Culture, UICulture, and LCID (Locale ID) -- all which seem to have something to do with changing the language and locale of the page. I'm sure each one of them is independent, and there's probably a good explanation for splitting them up. I just wish I knew that explanation.

• MS devotees seem to be heavy on marketing. It's as if Microsoft programmers feel the need to validate and be validated in their choice of MS development environments. Everything is splendiforous to them.