Willem wrote:
Are there any tools that would support higher level application
development with PHP? I need to develop a complex enterprise app, but I
don't want my programmers to waste their time on low level functionality
such as input validation, interface aspects and database interaction.
Even a simple interface to our customer database requires a lot of
effort in coding input and processing pages, while this is all standard
functionality that must have been created a zillion times before.
It's still at an early stage of development but you might want to take a
look at PfP Studio
http://pfp-studio.sourceforge.net/ - a RAD form building
tool. This is only one part of the puzzle - I'll eventually get round to
integrateing authentication and access controls, along with a templating
system.
I had a look some time ago for tools to speed up development of business
information systems. Although there are more CMS and frameworks out there
for PHP than you can shake a stick at, they're mostly slashdot-type news
publishing systems and not very apposite to this kind of application - the
authentication usually is built-in and doesn't allow fine grained control.
The templating systems are overkill. And difficult to integrate new
functionality. Which is why I started writing my own solution.
(but I'm happy to be proved wrong)
HTH
C.
